In my opinion, this web revolution is driven by the way we want to live in the web. The current Internet landscape is basically formed by islands interconnected by ferries (hyperlinks). Some islands have very dense populations but still isolate from other islands. The objective of the site is to turn you into an islander (user acquisition), make you settled down there (user registration), and stay as long as possible (user retention), and hope you enjoy your information hunting in your lonely islander life (user demand fulfillment).
The web landscape start to morph into continent from social aspects. In social networks, you constantly interact within your social groups. Islander life becomes quite stone-aged as you maintain friends at Facebook, expand your professional network at LinkedIn, share hobby photos at Flickr, all in three isolated social groups even there is quite valuable overlap in your physical acquaintance. For your social life, you want to live in mega-cities at connected, merged, blended continents. Your identity will surpass the site identity. Your social interactions will go beyond the site boundary. Your continental social experience is the center of the universe, not the site.Technically, the continent construction is addressed by social app interoperability with the effort of opening up each platform. A social app mashup layer above individual platforms will deliver boundless social experience. Alternatively, recent Google's OpenSocial initiative attempts to construct bridges to interconnect the islands. Exciting technology. Regarding the practical execution, you can sense the challenge given the island analogy.
