A lot can happen in a year, especially in the world of technology. I may not have been blogging, or even working in the tech sphere, but I’ve still been doing my best to keep up.

My personal tech has moved on; the BlackBerry has been replaced by an N95, and I’ve added a Mac Mini to my collection – allied to an EyeTV 250+ it makes a great PVR. But this post is more about the changes in the world of social media over the past 12 months.

A year ago Time Magazine had just named ‘You’ as Person of the Year, Steve Jobs had just unveiled the iPhone, and we were all trotting out the likes of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Second Life as the next big thing.

And now?

The latest Person of the Year is one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The iPhone (now on v1.1.3) has been hacked, cracked and, in the case of one of my friends, broken. I’d quite like one, but I’m waiting for version 2.

Facebook looks pretty unstoppable, at least for now. My Dad uses it, my daughter wants to. I succumbed and joined up a few months ago – aside from getting the occasional sheep thrown at me, it’s proven quite handy for sharing photos and playing Scrabble clones of debatable legality. Flickr and YouTube are maturing, developing and becoming more mainstream.

But I’m not quite sure where Second Life’s got to. I get the impression it’s not quite yet delivered on its Gibsonesque promises, though. Does anyone out there use it, apart from PR firms and marketeers? Has it become a geek-clique, the opposite of Facebook’s growing ubiquity? Or am I just more out of touch than I thought? Care to enlighten me?