Future of Social Media

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Revision as of 14:01, 25 March 2012

Social media has exploded as a category of online discourse where people create content, share it, bookmark it and network at a prodigious rate. Examples include Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter and JISC listservs on the academic side. Because of its ease of use, speed and reach, social media is fast changing the public discourse in society and setting trends and agendas in topics that range from the environment and politics to technology and the entertainment industry.

Two years ago, social media was the future. Now, according to research by Nielsen, social networks and blogs are the top online destination for the world’s internet users, accounting for the majority of time spent online. Social media is more popular than email.

The definition of social media is built on three key elements: content, communities and Web 2.0. First, content refers to user created content which may be of very different types; it may be photos, pictures or videos, but also presence information, tags, reviews and play-lists, to mention some examples. Second, social media is based on communities and social interaction among users. Social media applications typically enable communication either directly – which has been common on the internet since early days – or via media objects. This was made possible during the last eight years when digital cameras and video cameras, camera phones and broadband connections became widely available. The development of digital technologies for content creation and sharing, together with web technologies and applications that let people easily participate on the internet, is the third corner stone. These technologies have usually been packed under the umbrella term web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). Sometimes, this term is used to refer to the whole phenomenon of social media, but here it is used it to summarise the technical aspect.

As a functional definition, social media refers to the interaction of people and also to creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting contents in virtual communities and networks. Thus, social media is literally user-driven activity, where the boundaries between producer and consumer are blurred. According to Pascu et al. (2008, p. 39), there are at least three dimensions defining the role of the users: users are suppliers of content, users support the distribution of content and service, and users have critical roles in the selection and filtering of relevant content and services.

Public relations specialists were some of the first people to embrace the power of social media, and as a result they are often the ones leading the way in the social space, whether they are consulting with clients from an agency point of view or strategizing on an in-house PR team.

In the past decade, the Internet has had a huge impact on how PR professionals function. As of late, social media is changing the face of PR, as well. We interviewed 14 PR pros on the future of public relations and how they see social media changing the industry. We collected their thoughts on how social media will affect the future of the press release, the evolution of social platforms, current limitations and solutions for those impediments, connecting with other PR pros, cost savings, and building relationships.

How the "social media specialists" see the future of social media: "The future of social media... is that the social graph becomes so ubiquitous in everything we do that we stop using the term 'social media'. Just about everything is more interesting when you start to realize how your friends are connected to it: who's been here, who's going where, who's experienced what, who's watching / listening to / reading what. Early adopters are already taking advantage of this. For example, I open foursquare after work to see where my friends are going for drinks, or I open it at restaurants to see what my friends say to order. Foursquare's new Radar feature buzzes your phone as you walk around to call attention to things your friends find interesting. This will happen with TV ('10 of your friends are watching right now!'), and it's already happening to music with things like Spotify and Facebook. Foursquare is hustling to make it happen with all the places you encounter in the real world." - Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare

"The future of Social Media is multi-dimensional. Each 'face' will correspond with an public/interest/career/personal area of your life and we will share or intersect that 'face' with others." - Mark Cuban, Chairman of HDNet and owner of the Dallas Mavericks

"Social media will be the main engine of discovery, giving us the ability to find the signal within the noise. As people's networks and interactions expand, massive data sets will generate predictive models that will know what you want before you look for it." - Chad Hurley, CEO of Delicious, co-founder of YouTube

References

Toni Ahlqvist, Asta Ba ̈ck, Sirkka Heinonen and Minna Halonen - "Road-mapping the societal transformation potential of social media"

Sitaram Asur & Bernardo A. Huberman - Social Computing Lab - HP Labs - "Predicting the Future With Social Media"

http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs/the-future-of-social-media-8392/

http://mashable.com/2010/08/16/pr-social-media-future/

http://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-social-media-2011-11