Beth Williams over at the Ruder Finn UK blog has blogged about recent PR Week article “Five up and coming social media sites every PR person should know about” (that’s what Beth calls the link, it doesn’t seem to be the actual headline, but it might help her with SEO) and makes the astute observation that in social media we can’t really predict what’s coming. And she’s bang on, especially when you consider that out of the ones talked about, at least one of them is – in digital terms – as established as Frank Sinatra (in digital years).

There’s a couple of things to bear in mind though:

• Twitter didn’t come from nowhere. It was more than two years before becoming an overnight success. Facebook was similar.
• texting is still the real surprise and winner of the digital comms era to date
• Google doesn’t always make winners

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a look at what’s suggested because it’s a list worth a look. Some highlights with my comments are below:

Phil Szomszor, Citigate Dewe Rogerson points out: “Google Latitude wasn’t the success hoped for” and that the new Twitter isn’t here yet. In both cases he’s right. Despite having run a successful PR event with Google Latitude and Twitter I feel it hasn’t taken off for PR as expected – why check your phone to see where someone is when you can just call them – but I think we’ll see it develop more. I’ve got some great ideas for it and I’m sure I’m not the only one…

Paul Armstrong, Kindred thinks Google Wave is in with a shout. Now, until today I hadn’t seen a practical use for Wave and I still think it’s too early (if Wave is to be a success it will be third party apps that take it there, just as apps boosted Twitter), but it’s a relatively safe bet (c.ref “no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft or IBM“).

Russell Goldsmith, Markettiers4DC talks about tagging in YouTube and I must confess: I thought you already could.

Mat Morrison, Porter Novelli brings up Farmville, the really popular/annoying as hell (delete as applicable) game on Facebook and he points out the thing that so many people are missing: that game – and others like it – are ridiculously brandable.

David Phillips, Publicasity talks about Augmented Reality and it’s a fair point. I think we’ll see AR develop in two stages where we see some content uploaded and then, as bandwidth becomes more ubiquitous (remember I’m typing this in a country where only one third is online and another third cannot get online) real-time AR updates. That’s going to be interesting – and scary. Privacy concerns will really kickoff then.

James Warren, Weber Shandwick pointed out Posterous as the one to watch (I can hardly disagree), but he surprised me with his comment “If Friendfeed doesn’t become more user-friendly, Facebook will continue to eat its lunch” given that they are now owned by the same company so to an extent, it’s irrelevent what Friendfeed does or doesn’t do. but I do love that he sneaked in a mention for faxbook mind you.

I was surprised that more emphasis wasn’t put on mobile, but going back through the list, most things there are fairly platform-agnostic. What was good to see was a reality check – missing in so many other parts of PR and client relationships – that every new thing will shine and that we can predict 100% what the next big thing will be.