Last year, Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior Analyst at Forrester, started a very useful list of white-label social networking platforms. Little did he realize back in Feb 07 that his list of vendors would grow to 100+.
Yikes! That is way too many. Short of wikis, AJAX libs/frameworks, project management tools, contact managers, and CMSs, I can't think of a more crowded category of software (desktop or web-based). Potential customers will have their hands full trying to ascertain the pros and cons of the various platforms. Similar to the portal, CMS & e-commerce app wars of the late 90s and early 2000s (um....remember Blue Martini anyone), expect to see massive consolidation and shakeout in this area. In the end we'll be left with a few dominate commercial players, a few dominate open-source players, and a long-tail of niche offerings.
