Lately, two themes are coming up with some of the people I follow through the web. One theme is uncertainty about what lies ahead for Web 2.0 with respect to whether it is just a bubble or a sign of better things to come. There are people on both sides of the argument. The other theme is one of information overload. It seems like A-lister after A-lister is complaining that all these interactive channels are too much too fast. They, and even a Z-lister like me, are getting overwhelmed by the volume of information flying at us on a day to day basis.

John C. Dvorak seems to think that Web 2.0 is a bubble. Of course, leave it to John to raise peoples’ hackles; I love how he can get a rise out of people. Of course, there are people who feel otherwise like Marshall Kirkpatrick and Rex Dixon. We’ll see Dvorak back up a bit and then explain in further detail why he is right and why people are overreacting to him. I would say that Dvorak is right. He left enough wiggle room in his writing to explain that all the Web 2.0 is a phase that will die down and lead to something new. Let’s keep that in mind while I jump to the next topic.

The links above are courtesy of Robert Scoble, who slides into an explanation of how all these new social platforms are overwhelming us and resulting in a move away from A listers. He points out that unlike the first Internet bubble, the current one is different in that people are actually adopting the services that are out there.

Now to tie this all together in my mind, and hopefully yours, the reason why we are so overwhelmed is that people are adopting the use of all these social media services. People are hopping on to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and on and on. The fact that so many people are hopping aboard these services is what is creating this information overload. You can imagine that every new network with its set of features, practically doubles the points of interaction that your mind has to deal with. Every network has its own messaging system, its own commenting system, its own blogging system, and so on.

That, my friends, is probably where Dvorak is heading. Developers cannot keep putting out new networks to join all willy-nilly. It’s gotten to the point where one really has to think long and hard about taking on a new messaging, blogging, comment, or whatever responsibility. Although the hardware and software may be scalable, we aren’t. What we may see happen is that the leaders in todays social networking environment will pretty much be it. Many of us are too invested in the networks we have to even think about experimenting with another one.

To further tie things together, this is why A listers may not be cutting it anymore, according to Dare Obasanjo. You can’t simply jump networks just because the A list is trying out the New Shiny Object. You have to stay where your friends are. Are you really going to dump all your friends to follow an A list blogger? So the crash that Dvorak predicts is not in the overall viability of social networks; rather, it is in the willingness of people to devote brainspace to yet another attention diffuser, as Scoble puts it. Although the Internet can accommodate innumerable new networks, people can’t accommodate many more in their attention spans.

We may see a consolidation of services. Facebook is brilliant in allowing services to interface with them. It allows you to go to one place and take care of your socializing while keeping an eye on your external services. Soon enough, somebody will beat Facebook by tearing down the wall that keeps your content inside of the network. What if, instead of blogs and a bunch of disjointed presences on different networks, we could have one presence? What if instead of bloggers, podcasters, or video producers, we become channels?

To illustrate, what if, instead of visiting this site to see my blog, another site for my photos, another for my video, another for my audio, and so on; what if you simply came here and I pulled all of that in for you? What if there were only one place for you to comment on anything I create? What if all the profile pages on all the different social networks simply pointed you to my profile here?

Social media isn’t dead; but we do need a more scalable model for our attention and brainspace. Don’t be surprised if you see the Shaine Channel in the years to come. But most of all, don’t be surprised if the social network landscape looks nothing like it does today in the years to come. I see more consolidation of content into one point of contact. One person, one channel.