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Tagged also launched its own in-house development studio last year, Sarner says, because it found that the games that did the best achieved the company’s aims were built by Tagged itself. There are still a few games built by third parties on the network, but moving forward the company’s focus will be in-house.

Unlike the better-known social networks, Tagged focuses on what it calls “social discovery,” or, as Sarner describes it, “the meet new people space” (as opposed to connecting you online with your real world friends). Sarner argues that other companies are finally starting to catch on to the potential here.

1. Apps that require more time of more users will not succeed. The days of a new-app-a-minute and tremendous time-wasters are over. (He cites FourSquare as one such time-suck, but we really like FourSquare at Argyle!) Social-savvy consumers will stop allowing the firehose of content to bowl them over. They will become pickier and consumption will happen on their terms. Scarcity of time will dictate which apps survive. Sorry, Fruit Ninja. It’s been real.
2. Apps that are efficient, faster, and smarter will thrive. Any app that has a higher value to time ratio will outpace and outperform (and potentially be acquired by a much larger company with ambitious social plans on the horizon).
3. These two predictions will eventually lead to a time period Colony refers to as PoSo – or post social. Startups that adapt to the post-social demands (less time, more content) have an unparalleled opportunity. Success in a post-social world will depend not on volume of content, but the ability to do more with less.
 
 

Moving forward, ask your company these two questions: Does our app’s success depend on gaining more users to spend even more time? If the answer is yes, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

It’s not always obvious upfront what should be your best in the world focus and enshrining the wrong thing can be a problem. However, it is much worse to build a social product without guiding principles. When you are focused on the one thing your social product is going to do better than everyone else, all you need to launch is your one thing and no more.

Ask yourself and every member of your team what you are best in the world at every week. Even better, define it, agree on it, print it out, blow it up, and put it on the wall. This should be the filter by which everyone is making product decisions.

There are few people who have thought as long and hard about the impact of this third wave on both the web and the world as Marc Davis, the former Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Mobile and now a Partner Architect at Microsoft. Davis’ core argument is that we are moving from what he calls a “web of pages” to a “web of people.” The web and the world are “becoming one,” Davis believes, thereby making this third wave one of the most significant cultural, political and social events of the early 21st century.

Social entrepreneurs should listen carefully to Marc Davis too. His vision of the economics of attention and trust reveal the emergence of a 21st century social economy that will be fundamentally different from the 20th century industrial economy. And, as Davis notes, much of the core infrastructure of this new social economy – such as a viable banking system for personal data – has yet to be built. So the entrepreneurial opportunities in this third wave are immense. Facebook, Zynga and Twitter are just the beginning. The best is yet to come.

Why social is changing everything