Well, that's a big question to answer and I don't have enough spare time at the moment - but it's something I will probably return to and blog about. A full answer to this is something that needs to evolve over time as a result of real world marketing and analysis of the data that is collected.

In summary though, at present, I can see the potential for a huge shift in the internet landscape as a result of Hive based technologies, but only once they deliver the promise that has always been lurking here but never actually realised. The efforts of the SPK project are generally pointing in the direction I am highlighting here: Tools to empower communities to create their own immutable online spaces, with their own token, their own rules and their own indestructible media hosting. Essentially, we take the power of Youtube from Google and the power of Twitter/Wordpress/Facebook from the corporations and we create the tools needed to give that power completely to the people - removing the middle men completely.

Once this is fully operational (it could be within a year from now), this then has to be proven to be effective and will be helped by some successful projects being promoted both organically and with deliberate marketing assistance. Who exactly the communities are that first make use of it and become popular is not something I can accurately predict, but it could be groups who have been heavily censored on web 2 or just future facing groups of technology minded individuals.