According to Internet News and other sources, the U.S. operations of international Internet portal and services provider Terra Lycos have decided to call it a day with its lagging search-and-content portal efforts and to devote its operations entirely to becoming the center of a "vast social network." Already successful with dating-oriented services and its Tripod web site services, The Lycos crew seems to see the future in inverting the content equation - making socially-defined content the valuable core of a Web portal and other content peripheral. When you're no longer in the running for a dominant presence in the traditional portal market, it's not a bad idea to try to flip things around and to center your unique content-generating assets. As indicated in the New York Times, technology is evolving rapidly to increase both computing power and bandwidth radically over the next decade, a factor that is sure to accelerate the migration of valuable content into the hands of its creators and consumers more than intermediaries. General-interest portals are here to stay, but increasingly the trend will be towards content services that start from the individual on out, not the content on in. Social content will be the backbone of such services, so Lycos may be on to something, here.