Online Society: The Next Generation.

Back in the prehistoric days of the online world, sluggish dinosaur bulletin board services (BBS) walked the earth. The few fanatics who were online at this time quickly discovered that you could meet other people with similar interests on the BBS – which is how internet dating was born.

Flash forward to now. Hundreds of millions of people with a wide variety of interests and tastes are online, visiting tens of millions of websites. Many people right now who don't let a day pass without checking in with Online Services: email, bulletin boards, IRC-style chat, or their online Dating Message Services. And the younger the person, the more likely they are oriented toward online services.

So where is it all going?

Bulletin Board and Static Services

Bulletin boards are the oldest and simplest forms of online society, and they're still going strong. Judging by what my teenage son does all day every day, they probably will continue as the backbone of Internet society for a long time yet.

But they are the big brothers of other static online communication, with large and loyal communities built up around them. Another major form of static online communication is the profile, used extensively by online dating services. The profile is your face, your best way of showing others who and what you are.

One last new development is the integration of the bulletin board community with the newer technology of the wiki. Though it started with Wikipedia, new little wikis based on the free backbone are springing up everywhere. And slowly, the wiki is developing into not just a way to look stuff up, but a way to find guidance and experts on just about anything you're interested in.