While looking at Social Networks for a large project my committee at the Web Analytics Association is involved with, I've noted that Google's announcement of OpenSocial is about to change Social Networks.  My own assessment, so far, is along the lines of B.L. Ochman, who posted  Love It or Hate It, Google's OpenSocial Signals the Mainstreaming of Social Networking:

"…Later today, Google will announce OpenSocial (link will go live soon ) and suddenly, every marketer who wants to stay relevant will need to start taking social networks very seriously indeed."

"..The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike, Slide, Flixter and RockYou, are expected to be present Thursday evening at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where they will announce that they will tailor their programs to run on the OpenSocial sites."

That would be a fun party to be at …..

But at any rate, it looks to me that many things will be different within the next 6 months - Social Networks, and Social Network Advertising - fed by the the reality that many applications written for one social network, will run on others, will be putting more money into Social Networks - which has been happening anyway - but I see it accelerating rapidly.

But the bar will be raised too (isn't always raised) …. a simple social network with limited functionality probably won't do it - the social networks will continue to need to improve, in order to differentiate themselves - and maybe some of them will end up consolidating, for all I know.

All I know, for sure, is that 6 months from now, the social network landscape is going to be much different - hopefully, that will be a good thing.