JS_Harris - 12:43 pm on Mar 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

The near future is not content, search/link or social.

I have to disagree with 1/3 of that.

- I agree that social is not the future, people inclined to be social online use the latest and brightest shiny new services, they move along when something new comes. If you plan on competing with social you're fighting facebook and twitter, how deep are your pockets? A better service isn't enough to make people move from these but when the herd moves in mass, its not easily stopped.

- I agree that search/link is not the future, we have major search engines and we have many other ways of linking similar sites together already. Search/link is also monetized the same way as content sites.

- I disagree with "content is not the future". In my opinion it is THE future. Keep in mind that the top 3 results in search command a majority of the traffic for each keyword/term. You CAN create better content and in time, if it is truly better content on a well designed site, it gets recognized as such. USER GENERATED CONTENT sites however just don't hold a flame to subject dedicated sites when fighting for top spot, massive user generated and/or content aggregating sites see their value erode as competition stiffens (or when someone decides they want a specific keyword and are capable of producing better than wikipedia content on a dedicated site).

Moving forward site authority is becoming extremely important, when starting a new site are you ready to compete for it and stick it out for the long haul?