It's official: we have passed the point where social media networks are a novelty, and we now have more choices for sharing our lives and interests with others than the market can sustain.

Now we've got former Netscape guru Marc Andreessen offering "Ning" (where did that name come from?) a free social networking site. And there's also Girlfriendscafe.com, "a safe haven for women to communicate to one another and have fun." They'll have fun screening to keep the men out. Video search engine Blinkx is developing NowThen.com, which focuses on uploading and sharing images to cell phones. These are just in today's news, so you can imagine how many social networking sites have been launched so far this year.

While MySpace will likely endure, we won't see dozens of social networking sites around in a few year's time. Social networking functions (sharing comments, photos, recommending content) are being woven into existing content sites, and that's where the long term interest (and money) will be.

Instead of starting home pages on multiple social net sites, most netizens will just use the existing tools on the sites they already visit, such as news (including digg, delicious, etc), sports, music and others. Quality content that enables user participation is the better model instead of building cool tools and hoping that users will generate the content that people will want to ingest. Advertisers will have more faith in buying space on the Washington Post's social networking pages than on start up sites. We don't need anymore social networking sites -- we need the best ideas to be used on the sites that we know and love.

Marketers looking to reach younger males should invest in online video, according to data from Leichtman Research Group. The group says men aged 18-34 account for 41% of those who view video online on a daily basis, as well as making up over two-thirds of adult YouTube watchers.

So hello beer, sneaker and video game advertisers, come on down!

Between online video and video games, broadcast TV is facing some stiff competition. That will only get more difficult in the coming years as Joost seeks to create a web TV experience that rivals cable.

Joost just launched a beta but have already have sewn up a deal with Viacom and are likely to get the big content providers in their tent.

The biggest nuts to crack are nailing down the web measurements and advertising models. By making TV viewing and advertising as quantifiable as performance marketing, Joost can boost video advertising to make it an attractive buy. Advertisers will move from broadcast to online because they will have more confidence in the numbers and because they can create interactive ads to immediately connect with consumers.

Today there exists a wide chasm between video content and ad dollars, but look for Joost to bring the sides together.

BitTorrent finally unveiled its legal video download service today, offering 5,000 movies, games, TV shows and music videos. The company is trying to stay one step ahead of peer-to-peer competitor Joost, which has been getting lots of buzz as the "future of movie downloads."

The BitTorrent Entertainment Network has Warner Bros., Paramount and MGM on board, which already puts them ahead of Apple's iTunes in video content. BitTorrent has 80 million users in the U.S., according to the San Francisco Chronicle, but as Napster knows, turning free users into paying customers can be a challenge.

BitTorrent offers rentals that must be watched within 24 hours of being initiated, and the price (between $2.99 and $3.99) makes the company competitive with Amazon, Wal-Mart, Apple, et al. The market will likely support only a few major players, so expect 2007 to be the year of growth, followed by a rapid shakeout.

Podcast advertising grew substantially in 2006, but it will remain a niche for the foreseeable future, according to an eMarketer report quoted in MediaPost.

"Podvertising" will grow five-fold during the next five years according to eMarketer, but the company says podcasts will always have a limited audience. "Despite an incessant buzz about the medium, regular podcast users are still rare," according to James Belcher, eMarketer senior analyst.

Many folks were very upset with me when in December I wrote that podcasting as a source of revenue is over-hyped and will never be an impact media. The folks at eMarketer seem to be agreeing with me to some degree.

Podcasting generated $80 million in ad revenue last year. With more than 90,000 podcasts available, that means the average podcast generated less than $900 for the year in ad revenue. Is that a business model? By comparison XM Radio has revenue of nearly one billion dollars for the year. So I stand by my statement that satellite radio is more of an impact medium.

At least I'm not alone in feeling that way.