At its heart, the internet is about information dissemination, in whatever form that information takes. Discovery has always been the issue, from link portals

At its heart, the internet is about information dissemination, in whatever form that information takes. Discovery has always been the issue, from link portals to message boards to search engines, it's finding information you're interested in. The current "social network" trends are another aspect of that discovery process. The difference being that an individual (or company) can more directly impact how the discovery is made and who makes it. This makes it more viable for an individual to provide information and it to be discovered. I think all of the 'mundane' applications of it you see are exploring different facets of the same thing. What we have is a specialization of one aspect of the internet (dissemination of personal information to a small network) and I think the next step will be the same for different categories of information. Not a "social network for code", but a platform for discovery that appropriately fits the niche. We then get q hierarchical discovery model where you search for where to find the information, and then search for the information. But we need all the boring steps in between to find the right model for each niche.