I have written about this issue a few times and most recently said social networing is overdone. I still believe this.

However the overdone part relates to making money and not with audience. Recently Myspace.com made a great deal with Google for selling ad words. Great coup for News Corp! I am not sure that many of the other larger social networking sites will get similar deals.

I am very optimistic about the future of the Internet and the many new ideas that will come down the road (rapidly). But when I read that Sumner Redstone fired his CEO at Viacom because of the CEO's poor digital strategy, I fear we are seeing froth in the market similar to what happened in the period 1999-2000. The froth back then culminated in the insane deal between Time Warner and AOL.

Perhaps the froth this time will culminate in Viacom paying Youtube.com a billion or more?

We shall see.