Michael Hirschorn tells us that “the social media revolution will go out with a whimper.”

Why? Essentially because of commoditization. There are a few supporting arguments here, including the following:

• “Social media has been around since the dawn of the Web”
• “nothing is cool forever”
• “features associated with social networks are increasingly being tacked on to existing sites”

Hirschorn’s point then seems to be not that social media will “go out with a whimper,” but rather that such tools will become so omnipresent as to suck the life out of more centralized “walled garden” portals such as MySpace and Facebook. That’s an important point if you think you’re going to monetize a new and centralized Web 2.0 enterprise:

Few of the social networks have yet proved adept at truly linking people of like-minded interests, and many of the networks being started now, especially by entrepreneurs and corporations looking to grab their slice of 2.0 glory, tend to miss the reason the best sites work: They facilitate behavior that people already engage in.

But more generally the commoditization of Web 2.0 implies just the opposite of the bursting bubble thesis: Social media are here to stay. And while the leading social networking sites may change or get commoditized out of existence and the “cool kids” “go elsewhere,” as Hirschorn tells us, this “elsewhere” will likely include social networking and other features that facilitate “behavior that people already engage in.”