Last week I received an email from a friend from college, Chelsea, asking if I had any predictions on the future of our social media world. She was putting together a presentation with predictions a year from now, 5 years and 10 plus years. So I sat down and thought up these:
(These may be more my hopes than actual predictions, but hey, if I’m wrong then you can come yell at me one, five, or 10 years from now).
One year:
- Social media will be about aggregating everything into one place; your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Friendster, blog, etc. Whether this is with an application or a whole new platform.
- Google wave, due out later this year, incorporates email, AIM, and photos in a wiki-style platform. Check out the video which walks you through all the features.
Five plus years:
- We will begin to see monopolies in social media - a few will own it all. I predict a growing battle between Google & Facebook – who will own everything?
- Huge growth of mobile marketing - this just may be the new billboard
- Social marketing will also move to our mobile devices, people will rarely log into Facebook and Twitter (if either are still around) via their computer
- The new trend will be de-friending - Social media will be about simplifying. It will no longer be cool to follow everyone. It will be more important to form a deeper connection with a few friends.
- The job search will move into social media, making connection through LinkedIn and other platforms will be more useful than personal connections.
- Businesses will use social networks to replace their main Web sites. Why go to a social network to monitor the discussion (although that will still be necessary) when you can have the customer come to you. This will not be available to all companies, but the major ones will be doing this in a few years (i.e. Skittles who just high jacked Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia).
- Decrease in blogging and increase in blog-style video.
10 plus years:
- Virtual reality social networks will allow you to leave your desk and jump into a social world. Instead of sending a coffee to a friend using an application on Facebook, you will put on your sunglasses (headgear, helmet, etc) and pop into your computer and sit at a café to chat.
- Blogging will be dead. People will be too inundated with information to spend time reading or writing a blog.
- Web 3.0 will be full force. Instead of using “AND” “OR” “NOT” and other Google search terms to find exactly what you are looking for, you will be able to type in one or two sentence and the first page will be exactly what you are looking for. This semantic web and those Internet spiders will be able to read the web as we read the web (say goodbye to keywords) and better predict what pages satisfy our individual searches.
