Is There Room for More Social Platforms?

As Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn continue to show strong growth (while MySpace continues to hang around), a major question is whether there’s room for new social media platforms to emerge.

For example, FourSquare has attracted a lot of attention as a place for mobile phone users to publicly display and share their location. Sprouter is trying to create a social media platform for entrepreneurs. And there are scores of other online players looking to build niche platforms.

While it’s great to see this kind of activity, I do wonder whether there’s a need or market for it. Do people already using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn really need to create another place to do social media?

Does it make more sense for FourSquare and Sprouter to closely attach/integrate themselves with the dominant social media players rather than trying to build separate, standalone communities?

My take is integration is a much smarter play than separation. I’m already active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging, which leaves little or no time to invest in new platforms.

What’s your take? Is there room for more social media networks/platforms?

More: Speaking of new social networks, Blippy is looking credit a new one based on being able to share the details of your credit card purchases. Sorry, this sounds downright bizarre! For more, the New York Times has a story.