If you take a look at recent edition of CES, you see a lot of focus on television, especially on a technological point of view (amongst others: 3D TV, wireless HD standard, web TV, transparent displays).

There's much hype and attention toward television and I think it's important to take a few moments and focus on how many signs are telling us that the future of television will be social.

1. Segmentation

Social media is evolving by allowing more and more niche networks inside more mainstream networks. Think about groups in Facebook, Twitter lists or Friendfeed rooms as an example.
Isn't television doing the same by creating channels based on specific content (classical music, fishing, fantasy stories ...)? Think about satellite and cable network evolving to niche.

2. Attention span

Social media is trying to fit shor attention span evolving to a somewhat longer fruition. Think about Hulu, allowing to watch longer-than-youtube-standard episodes.
Television is trying to evolve toward microformats (see, for instance current.tv) or micro TV series (no examples will be good here because we're talking of a real local approach to this).

3. Platform

Social media is moving from standard digital devices to appliances that are nearer the television world. Think about Boxee evolving into Boxee box.
Television is moving to more social hardware, too. Think about Skype TV by Panasonic.

4. Sharing

Social media is moving towards live streaming and live commenting. Take a look at the White House streaming on Facebook, but also to services like ustream.tv or justin.tv that allow users to comment live.
Television is evolving towards live commenting of content, too. This is a Watchmen Blue Ray feature: live commenting of the show.

5. Creation

Content creation and collaboration is at the core of social media nature. Needles to mention the impact on video creation YouTube has had and how crowdsourced video is gaining relevance. (I'm talking about professionally managed and directed crowdsourced video, that brands usually develop with their consumer together with their digital and social media agencies). See Doritos "Crash the superbowl"
Television is encouraging people to build their own content by aggregting existing content (TiVo, MySky) or by producing their own. Again - see current.tv experiment.

What do you think about this signs? Do you see more? How quick are we evolving?