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In just a few short years, social media has changed the way we interact with each other – as consumers, as businesses and as individuals. But there's more to come. We've been covering areas of social interest for a while now here on the Hoop blog, but have yet to discuss where we think the potential for innovation lies.

So we've picked a few of the areas where we think there is room for further innovation...

Twitter needs to start generating (more) revenue

Twitter recently announced they had hit 100m users, who send roughly 5bn tweets every month. To date, the company is valued at $8.4bn after recently closing a funding round that generated $800m. Which is all good and well on the one hand, but not so great when you consider the company doesn't yet have a definitive strategy for monetisation.

Luckily, they have a few options. Twitter currently licenses the 'firehose' – which allow tweets to be searchable in real time – to search engines such as Microsoft's Bing. Twitter did have the sameagreement with Google but it recently fell through. But the firehose surely can't generate enough to cover Twitter's current valuation? So the company needs to also be looking at other revenue generating models.

Arguably the next biggest option would be the potential revenue generated from advertising, be that promoted tweets or trending topics etc. When the model was launched last year, many were happy – as long as the advertising was targeted. Which it was; initially promoted or paid-for tweets were only seen in Twitter search from accounts the user followed. Users seem to like promoted content; with a recent survey showing that around 20% of surveyed users have either used a discount from a promoted tweet or discovered a new brand from one.

Promoted content you didn't ask for

But, at the end of last month, Twitter announced it was rolling out promoted tweets from accounts users don't follow. We were a little uncertain at first – how would this work? How would it be targeted? But then Twitter released a bit more information. These promoted tweets would occur in a user's stream if they followed an account that was subject to these ads. Or, according to All Things D;

In discussions with ad buyers, Twitter is describing the concept, which will roll out to a small subset of users by the end of September, as "Promoted Tweets to users like your followers".

This is a process employed on Facebook when you 'like' a brand's page; you're then subject to advertising from brands that Facebook deems to be similar to the one you've just become a fan of.

So, to justify Twitter's currently large valuation (which will only increase), we reckon we'll be seeing a significant increase in advertising on the social network. Will users cope being subjected from adverts from brands they're not following? If users start leaving the network, what other options will Twitter have to generate revenue instead?

Are there other options?

We'd love to see the site say no to an ad-based model and do something a little different.

Why not use the 5bn tweets a month – a veritable treasure chest of content – as a research tool and turn Twitter into something like a crowdsourced information platform? Or aggregate users and the content they generate into interest groups and sell access to them to advertisers/brands?

Change is coming to the twittersphere, change that will mark a new chapter in the company's history. The outcome is far from certain.

Do you think Twitter will change for better or worse once they finish rolling out the promoted content? Have you got any suggestions or points we may have missed in our discussion about Twitter's future? Feel free to leave us a comment below, via email or of course on Twitter.

So you've decided you need to focus your efforts on mobile technology, and whether to develop a mobile (or 'native') and/ or a web app. That's fantastic! But what's the next step? We think we may have the answer...

Near field communication (NFC).

If you live in London or have travelled in the city using Transport for London's Oyster travelcard, you'll already be familiar with the contactless technology. In 2010, 80% of the capital's travel network was paid for using the Oyster card – just one example of where this connectivity is quickly becoming part of everyday life.

If you're not yet be aware of NFC, fear not. 140 of the world's biggest mobile technology companies (Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and many more) have joined forces to form the NFC Forum championing near field communication and its uses.

Click here to watch 'Nearness' on Vimeo

NFC enables a contactless data transaction (as illustrated in the above video from Berg) between two devices that are either touching or are within a few centimetres of each other. This transaction may be monetary (like a payment or a travel card – like the Oyster), data or may simply involve connecting two devices wirelessly.

However, NFC's potential is most exciting when combined with mobile devices – like a smartphone...

Barclaycard and Orange recently joined forces to bring 'Quick Tap', the UK's first commercial NFC service, to market. Quick Tap allows the user to purchase items under £15 using a smartphones with an embedded NFC chip.

Click here to watch 'Quick Tap' on YouTube

But they're not the only companies looking to capitalise on NFC's capabilities. In May, Google launched 'Google Wallet', their mobile payment system in association with Samsung (although that may change given Google's recent purchase of Motorola). In August of last year, Apple hired an NFC expert as their 'Mobile Commerce Product Manager' – suggesting future iterations of their iOS devices may be NFC-enabled. Nokia announced that all of the new smartphone models they release in 2011 will be capable of NFC back in June 2010.

The 'mobile wallet' seems to have captured the imaginations of most, but other applications of an NFC-enabled smartphone are mind-boggling; opening doors, finding your car, replacing your Bluetooth devices (NFC is significantly faster) and so on.

Leading analyst firm Juniper Research published a report way back in 2009, forecasting the impact mobile payments would have – the numbers make for some interesting reading. The predicted value of mobile payments (for both physical and digital goods, NFC transactions and money transfers) is estimated to reach almost $630 billion by 2014.

So the predicted value is there. The numbers are there. There are 140 companies working towards a world where we revolve around NFC. But, like QR codes, we're yet to see the technology fully make it to the mainstream. It won't be long.

The future's digital. The future's mobile. The future's NFC.

Do you think NFC is the future of mobile connectivity; or are we becoming a little too reliant on our smartphones? Have you got any suggestions or points we may have missed in our NFC discussion? Feel free to leave us a comment below or let us know via email or Twitter.

1. The world's largest stop motion animation, shot entirely on a mobile phone

Do you remember Dot? We wrote about her a few months back, and today her makers are again getting some love on the Hoop blog. Aardman and Nokia again join forces to produce the world's largest stop motion animation, "Gulp", shot over five days on the Welsh coast using the Nokia N8. You can see the video here but it's the "Making of" that really blows us away. Superb stuff.

2. An insightful editorial on web design

We were impressed by this TechCrunch article, entitled "The Beautiful Internet". Whilst we agree with most of what Devin Coldewey (rather brilliantly says), we were a little concerned about his point about getting "the great unwashed" from their older browser versions. Which was wonderfully summarised in this piece from Isolani.

Web development isn't about getting everyone on the newest browser iteration, it's about catering to your target audiences' needs.

3. Apple has more money than the US Government

We followed the US Government's wheeling and dealing to raise the debt ceiling with baited breath last week. When it was announced that Apple had more cash in the bank than the 50 states of America, our jaws hit the floor.

But we knew things were really bad when the US Government gave us a ring and asked for our money.

4. Bamboo bikes

We've featured wooden bikes on the Hoop blog before, but none as innovative as this one. The above trike wasn't built into the above shape, the bamboo was grown (yes grown!) by its builder Alexander Vittouris as an entry for a competition run by Good Design Australia. Amazing!

5. Google, hire m.e

We've all been there, finding the perfect job but not quite knowing how to apply. If you're Matthew Epstein, you spend $1,200 on a moustache, a website and a video and you end up getting phonecalls from Microsoft, Google and Amazon three days after launching your "employ me please, Google" marketing strategy. Kudos to the guy, we're impressed!

So it's been a bad week on S California Avenue, Palo Alto. Facebook HQ must have been pretty busy after the bad press they've had. In case you missed what's happened, we'll give you a brief summary.

On May 3rd, an American online privacy and cybersecurity researcher called Christopher Soghoian published an email exchange (which you can read in full here) with a well known PR firm called Burson-Marsteller. Burson had contacted Soghoian asking if he would be interested in writing an op-ed piece about the 'privacy issues' behind Google's Social Circle. Burson even offered to "help place the op-ed and assist in the drafting, if needed". When Soghoian asked Burson who their client was he was told "I'm afraid I can't disclose my client yet". So Soghoian posted the emails online.

Then, on May 10th, USA Today posted an article on their website. As it turns out, Burson-Marsteller had also been contacting top-tier media outlets with a view to them writing about Social Circle and how it's "designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users - in a direct and flagrant violation of [Google's] agreement with the FTC" (which has now been proved to be "largely untrue").

USA Today contacted Google, who responded with:

"We have seen this e-mail reportedly sent by a representative of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller," says Chris Gaither, Google's senior manager of global communications and public affairs. "We're not going to comment further. Our focus is on delighting people with great products," he said.

Whilst all of this was going on, no one had yet found out who was paying Burson to seed these negative stories about Google. All that changed after The Daily Beast did a bit of digging and posted what they found on May 12th. Burson's client was Facebook - not Microsoft or Apple as first thought.

Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman ... confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: first, it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, Facebook resents Google's attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

Delving deeper into why Facebook might be attempting to smear Google, The Daily Beast discovered that Google's Social Circle seems to be lifting content directly from Facebook. So Google are trying to use Facebook's data in their own social media venture. Facebook claim that this is a violation of their Terms of Service (which are well worth a read if you have the time) but are more likely worrying about the potential threat this would have on their stranglehold on the social media market.

Google wants some of the Facebook advertising revenue. Facebook - with its 600 million active users that are targeted by adverts that annually generate $2 billion - don't like this idea. So they set out to sneakily smear the Google tool that might have an impact on their income and unfortunately got found out. Oops. Bad Facebook.

[An interesting sidenote; Mashable recently reported that Facebook accounts for roughly 30% of all display advertising impressions in the US. Their reach and potential revenue from advertising is huge.]

Facebook hiring a PR firm to seed stories about Google's lack of care for user's privacy is a bit of pot calling the kettle black. Neither of the parties involved have a clean sheet when it comes to privacy.

Google is currently facing a US Senate hearing about why their Android mobile software tracks users' locations. Oh, and lets not forget how they 'accidentally' sent Street View cars out to harvest data from wireless networks.

Facebook aren't exactly champions for user's privacy either. There are currently over 170 different settings for Facebook privacy and 'information sharing' - and they are prone to changing without warning. The social networking site are always getting into trouble for their ideas about privacy - but then they've admitted their concept is a little different from everyone else's. Social media and privacy don't really go hand in hand but Facebook exploit that fact in order to make their money (and they're very good at it).

Mashable have today (May 13th) written an interesting piece discussing if Facebook's points about Google's Social Circle (but not necessarily their attempts in broadcasting said opinions) are valid which you can read here.

This interesting story marks the start of the battle for power between two of the biggest and wealthiest Internet giants as they battle for supremacy in Silicon Valley. Who'll win? We don't know, but judging by Facebook's tactics they're a little bit worried.