From the people I talk to, there seems to be no loss of enthusiasm for social networking – especially for Facebook. Hey, with a $15 billion valuation (based on an investment from Microsoft), it must be doing something right.

But what can we expect in 2008?

Someone who should know is Gary Hall, the president of Pringo Networks, which operates a social networking platform. According to him:

1. In order to maintain stickiness in 2008, brands will need to employ social media tools and user-generated content (UGC). To keep their competitive edge, they will be proactive in understanding and identifying their users' specific interests, providing a more relevant and feature-rich community.

2. The greatest growth in social media will be in affinity groups and niches. The largest social media sites will become less relevant and attractive to those who want social media to be intimate and useful, rather than broadly distributed.

The market has changed enormously in the short year BloggingStocks has been bringing you moment by moment coverage. YouTube is now Gootube. AOL has dropping its membership model. The unknown in many quarterly reports increasingly comes from overseas sales.

On this, our first anniversary, our editors challenged us to put on our pointed hats, pull out the crystal balls and peer into the future. What will the world look like a year from now?

• The wireless scramble will become even more of a madhouse, as overlapping systems fight for the right to extend free coverage community-wide in return for ad revenue and upsell opportunities. The idea of a coffeehouse drawing customers to enjoy an island of wireless will seem quaint. Those companies selling wireless access in airports, etc. will see their business evaporate.
  
• Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, tapping into its iPod customer base, will finally provide an integrated music/telephone device that the public will embrace. Cell phone providers will scramble to offer competing products/services, spending huge dollars to out-promote Apple. With phone downloading, CDs will join VCR tapes and casettes on the junk heap.