Since I decided to take a weeks vacation from FriendFeed last Wednesday - I’ve been asking myself - How can social media become part of more peoples lives? My answer, social media needs to become part of the??activities??consuming the most time and energy in peoples lives outside the blogosphere before it will turn mainstream. And even if mainstream is achieved, it would surely be on the consumer end, not the producer. While startups struggle to pinpoint exactly what people need to make their service a hit, another obstacle stands in the way of providing users with the means to be able to produce content.??

Steven Hodson,??J. Phil??and Cyndy Aleo-Carreira??collectively pinned the reality of what it means to blog. At this level, there is relatively little or no money to make and for most bloggers this is nothing more than a hobby. Does that mean we should stop? Absolutely not! By creating conversations, we’re actually starting to unravel what people do need from services on the web and that’s why something very different should slowly begin to happen. What should happen is VC’s should slow their roll on making millions rain - this is not a rap video Silicon Valley - you’re going to run out of money before we discover the services people can truly benefit from!

What kinds of services can people benefit from? Aside from personal entertainment, there is a greater demand for users to provide for their family and put food on the table. I’m sorry to say, most services fail to help users meet their basic needs. Don’t say what about so and so, I’m concerned with the majority and not the few. The average user is working their ass off to make ends meet and I’d be damned to discover a service that ever helped me pay the few bills I have or others who have more financial??responsibility??than a college student.

So, where are the startups helping the everyday person (the mainstream user) meet their basic needs? If you find one, be sure to tell them they’re the ones who are going to change the world. And not because we don’t all love watching movies for free, reading news for free and conversing with thousands of people for free, but more so because our basic needs come before investing 90 minutes to watch an overpaid actor or actress live a lifestyle none of us can touch. I’m ready for the next generation of web startups to step up and define the word change. How about you?