The Big Winners of 2007

Every blogger is throwing out their predictions for the year 2007, so I figured I might as well throw mine into the bunch. Here are some social networks that I think will be winners in 2007:

Yelp: Yelp has one of the most active and dedicated user bases out of any community site on the web. The reviews and content on Yelp far surpasses the quality and usefulness of any other local review site on the web. In addition Yelp is one of the few social networks that is transfering online connections, to real world connections, through Yelp organized events for their members.

Next time when you have trouble deciding on what restaurant or bar to go to, visit Yelp first…I guarantee you will become a regular user. Yelp will continue to grow its user base and amount of content in 2007 and will start to compete on the level of a site such as Citysearch. A late 2007 acquisition isn’t even out of the question, in my opinion.

Facebook: Facebook will continue to thrive as a communication tool in 2007. There are even good chances of a late 2007 IPO. Fact is that Facebook has dominated the most important crowd in social networking (in my opinion); college students. They are probably the best positioned out of any of the big social networks to implement great new features (similar to sites like Loopt) when the time is right.

Side Note: Some other minor winners will be foreign facebook clones.

Virb: I finally got to see an inside view of Virb.com, which I previously spoke about. While I think they have a lot of work to do, their efforts so far at becoming a competitor to Myspace look far better then any other startup I have seen. I expect Virb to finally launch a larger release early in 2007 and make some waves in mid-late year.

Super Niches: Super Niche social networks that target high value groups of professionals such as doctors, real estate agents, investment bankers, etc. will see large growth in respect to their target audience. A couple current super niches are ActiveRain (real estate) and Sermo (doctors/physicians). These types of sites have more revenue options then just advertising, and are therefore an attractive space.

GroupVine: This is by far my ballsiest prediction. Groupvine is very small, unknown , currently ran by one person, and has a lot of concept iterations to still go through. Despite this, I love the concept (still mostly confidential) and think it has huge potential. If GroupVine can overcome a couple huge barriers and get on track to a simplified product, you will hear about it in the third quarter of 2007.

Side Note: If you are an all star techie/programmer looking to get into the social networking space, GroupVine is looking for a partner. Email me if interested.

[tags]Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Media, Predictions, 2007 Predictions, Facebook, Virb, Yelp, Groupvine, Sermo, ActiveRain, Brian Balfour[/tags]