I attended the MIT $100K Competition kick-off dinner on Tuesday. I never fail to learn something at these events. 

The domains that people are exploring for new businesses are constantly evolving. In particular, what can be done with social media as a platform or a source of data is striking. There are plenty of companies around that are using social media (be it Facebook, Twitter or something else) as a platform for their business. Farmville is, of course, a huge example of this phenom. But, it’s clear that there is a lot of raw data out there in tweetstreams and other places that can be used for many business purposes. Advertising is an obvious one, but by no means the only one. My sense is that folks are just starting to scratch the surface of what can be done with these platforms and the data they generate. 

Here is a prediction, if this year is the year of mobile, next year will see and explosion in the social media derivatives (for lack of a better term).