After social networks, what next? What is the next big thing?
Consumers are anxious to know what’s the trend for the future social networking sites. Are they going to stay long?
In my own personal opinion, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are going to last for quite a long time. Millions of “netizen” have invested their time and money into making connections, groups,uploading photos,videos and many more.
They are not going to leave this social networking sites, definitely not in the near future. Perhaps they might consider moving to a new niche sites if it offer more features and information needed in a particular area.
(**If these niche sites are able to keep up with the features offered by Twitter and Facebook, i believe they might join the Big Boys out there, don’t you think so?)
So, what’s next in social networking?
Predictions by Peter Thiel, Ram Shriram, Reid Hoffman, Dr Kate Blackmon. (guardian.co.uk)
Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal pointed out that
- “With digital technology there is a tendency to underestimate when things are getting mature, but to understand the financial and technological situation it is really important,”
- “Where in the history of social network are we? Are we at an early stage, and most of the companies won’t be around in a few years’ time? Or are we in a late stage, when companies like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter are really mature and will be in business to stay?”
- Are we at the end of innovation of social networking. And is social networking the last innovation of the internet?”
Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google and one of the search giant’s first investors,:
- “Combining social and mobile – there is a new wave of opportunities coming up, a growth of users, so mobile internet is clearly the next major computing cycle. And this time this didn’t start in the US, but in Asia and Europe from where it is going to the US,”
- “In China and India people always used their mobile as their PC; that was the way they accessed data. We face powerful new waves of publishing with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the social sits in the middle of this. There is a creation and production of information. There will be new distribution and consumption patterns which will impact society. This might even make newspapers even more irrelevant.”
Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman:
- “Today you have everyone generating data. I think these massive amounts of data are perfect for new applications.
- There will be a lot of new applications come out of it. “
- There will be interesting mash up liked Linkedin and Twitter.
An Oxford lecturer, Dr Kate Blackmon:
- put this in a nutshell in saying that the future was not about crowd sourcing but crowd filtering.
So what’s the next big thing after all?
- Integration of social and mobile, therefore mobile internet is clearly the next major computing cycle.
- This trend is started in Asia and Europe and it’s going to US because China and India people always used their mobile as their PC, that’s the way they accessed their data.
- Mobile business opportunities are coming and it’s taken by small young companies, as it’s easy and cheap to build these applications. User tend to pay on mobile internet for premium services.
So is social media over?
Definitely NO!
Present social networks are growing. Future niche social networking sites are just moving forward.
The only thing is making use of the overflow of information that keep pouring in each day and this is just the starting point for mobile and social networking integrations in our near future.
6 hundred millions social network today spend so much time creating network
By 2012, over 9 hundred million people will be accessing their social network via their mobile phone. And they are many phone applications eg: photos, chats, texts.
Integration is what we are looking forward to in the future..
Asia Report attends the social networking world forum in Singapore where Simon Kearney spoke to Mobile web optimiser Netbiscuits, social networking site Friendster and marketing firm Vöcanic.
Additional Information
http://ares.palm.com/Ares/about.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/cell-phones/?p=2779
http://www.youtube.com/user/InfinitaTV
http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2009/09/17/windows-mobile-7-to-natively-feature-social-networks-integration
Reports by Nielsen
Social Networking Going Mobile
Social Networks & Blogs Now 4th Most Popular Online Activity, Ahead of Personal Email
social networking sucks. i don’t see what the big deal is about it, whats so addicting and fun about these sites? to me, they are all boring and useless. what do they provide that did not already exist before they came along? nothing! thats why they’re pointless. anyways, i hope the next fad after social networking gets old will be something actually fun.but everything already exist, so there is no such thing as creating something “new”. just creating something that already exist and trying to make it better. is’nt that what facebook did to myspace…? yep.