I’m seeing a pretty sudden and pretty prominent trend in social networking: social networking burn-out. As great as Web 2.0 is, it isn’t that surprising that people are burning out on it. There was a ton of attention when gapingvoid posted a funny cartoon about time being consumed tweeting in the post, “ Why I Deleted my Twitter Account.”

Here’s why:

• Something new happens. Everyone thinks it’s cool. Reports say you simply MUST be doing it. So people and companies and organizations jump on board.
• Then they realize something: you need to actually socialize to do social networking. So it’s manpower intensive if you’re an organization, and it’s a time-sucker if you’re a human.
• People want to be cool online, and they think they can do that by being friends with everyone. But it’s hard to be in EVERY clique. That’s why cliques exist. So you can focus.
• They try to connect on several levels and several locations, and just can’t stand to spend another minute socializing.

So here’s what I expect to happen next. Companies who were nervous about dabbling in this realm to begin with will see this emerging trend as a sign they were right all along, and this whole social web/Web 2.0 thing was just a passing fad.

They will be wrong.

What will happen is that social networking will settle in. People will find their social niches and favorite sites, and they will ignore the other “cliques.”

Then some of the big guys will level off on traffic, slow down or be bought out by other sites. The smaller, niche social networks will become even more popular.

People will keep socializing because that’s how the web has evolved. How and where they will socialize is what will change.