How do you think social media will change in the future?..... week 7

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How do you think social media will change in the future? What other trends would you add to the mix? Are they any specific technologies that you think will gain popularity or emerge?

I think we are going to be in for huge change in the future when it comes to social media. Social media is starting to become a way of life for most people, and I think eventually it will be a way of life for all of us. This is because it’s easy; there is nothing to using social media. In the near future social media will be done all hands free, most likely all by voice command. Look at us today, we can take pictures from our Smartphone’s and post them straight on Face book, or write on our blogs from our phone. We have now become so lazy that we can’t wait to get to a computer; we use our portable devices to do everything. I think eventually we are not even going to have to think for ourselves, our devices will do it for us. From the convenience that social media is giving us today I think it will create a lazy society. Personally I think that because so many people are using social media now, everyone else will soon join the mix and our society will run through social media. Sure it gives us better social skills behind a screen, but is the convenience worth destroying our personal social skills with real people? Do we really want to spend our lives behind a computer screen not truly knowing who we are communicating with, or actually meeting people, because this is what society will become if social media truly has a future?

Here are the top 11 predictions for what social media will look like in 2012. Some of these items exist today in their early stages, but this list is about what I believe will become the norm in 2012. Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership — and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.

1. Privacy expectations will change
There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.

2. Complete decentralization of social networks
The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You’ll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you’ve established. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different
Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

4. Rise of the content aggregators
The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites.

5. Social media augmented reality
Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined
As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically.

7. Ratings everywhere
In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

8. Social media agents
Managing the customer experience offline and online is already a key concern for marketers and customer-experience advocates.

9. Riding the (Google) wave
Wave offers marketers a unique way, at minimal cost, to allow consumers to engage with each other in way that are miles beyond anything we is currently using. Savvy marketers will develop extensions for Wave that evolves its unique communication toolset into a rich brand experience that is immersive but allows for new levels of interaction from crowd sourced storytelling to crowd sourced product design.

10. Thinking beyond “newness”
In 2009 we became very focused on the real-time nature of social media. The implications behind consumer feedback and interaction around brands using tools like Twitter or Facebook’s news stream caused marketers to re-evaluate the power of social media tools in parallel to “traditional” digital-media channels such as search.

11. Social media everything and the return of digital media
Social functions will become so commonplace in digital experiences that the thought of not having socially-enhanced experiences will seem illogical. Digital media by its very nature is inherently social. I hope we’re not talking about social media in 2012, and we just refer to everything as digital media again.

Do you think that social media has the potential to bring about real social change?

I definitely believe that social media has the potential to bring about real change in society. There are so many different things that it has allowed us to do. Social media allows us to get in touch with people that are all over the world. An incredible example of this comes from the disaster that just occurred last week in Japan. A female student is studying at an university in California and was very worried about her family back in Japan, she had no way to get a hold of anyone. She later found out that there was a video posted on Youtube that showed her sister on the balcony in her family home with a sign saying "we are all ok." http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/15/california.student.japan/index.html?hpt=C1#

Another great example of social media contributing to a big change in society also relates to the disaster in Japan. Lady Gaga is known across the world and many people are ridiculously huge fans so they will go to great lengths to follow what she does, regarding the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Lady Gaga created a Japan bracelet where the $5 will go towards relief. In just under 48 hours, $250 000 had already been raised for Japan. That is incredible, and all just because of someone's social media influence. http://blog.muchmusic.com/monsters-raise-250k-for-japan/

These two examples are of course the good side to social change. A few examples of social media having bad influences include decrease in personal face-to-face contact. You hear about people in offices and how they no longer get up from their desks anymore to deliver a message, all you have to do now is send it through an e-mail or other social media source because it is so much quicker.
My sister is 17 years old and she does not even like to call people, she would just choose to Facebook them or text.

Of course the question was not the negative and positive aspects of social media and real change, it was whether there was the potential to bring about real social change. And I believe that including the positive and negative aspects, it has brought about real social change.
:)

Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

I do believe that social media has increased the quantity of news, but at the same time decreased the quality of new that you are receiving. Think about all the people that are posting their version of the news. It is everyone and anyone. They have the opportunity to input there version of the news onto their blog, podcast, or social networking site. And this information may not necessarily be factual. Also it is very easy to ‘Photoshop’ any picture, so if these citizen journalists wanted to make their news seem more real, they could just add there Photoshop picture. But overall news in social media is going to keep growing, whether or not the information is fact or fiction. And because social media is growing and not going anywhere soon, the news in the blogs, podcasts, and social networks is going to keep growing as well.

I do really like the idea of people sharing their ideas, and inputting there journalistic facts and information, towards their social media of choice. I just do not like the idea, that I am getting false information. I actually do enjoy getting my news from the internet. It is much easier and convenient to do then possibly, reading the newspaper. This has also decreased sales for newspaper companies. But I do not enjoy having to search more than one source, just to make sure that all the information I get is accurate. So overall, I am torn between the easy accessibility of the internet, and knowing that it is not all true. And the newspaper, which I know is more accurate then the internet.

What is your perception of social media, do you think it is a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

Social Media has a large impact on peoples lives in today's society. For me it started on Myspace, to Facebook and twitter. I use Google constantly and Wikipedia on a day to day basis. I know a lot of my friends who use dating sites and met their sweethearts on those sites. I use Youtube when I need to get a laugh out of my day and talk about funny clips to my friends. I have a blackberry to keep myself informed of news feeds on Facebook, and BBM (black berry messenger) latest gossip of jersey shore. So do I think social media is fad or the biggest shift since the industrial revolution? Social media is definitely here to stay, and will never leave even if we wanted to. I never once thought it was just a ''fad". Social media isn't just a a new clothing line that's here for a week and gone. It's all over the world, from China to Canada and is used numerous times in a day. Social media is definitely the worlds addiction in my eyes and is constantly getting bigger and better! There's always new things coming out to get the people more excited and involved in social media. Even if someone isn't a fan of Facebook or twitter, their most likely using a cellphone, using Google or going on Wikipedia, and their involoved in expanding the growth of social media it's self. I think it will be really cool to see what impact social media will have on my children's children one day. Will Facebook still be alive? Will Youtube still be the hit to watch videos on? What bigger and better invention will they have to expand the growth even more?
Social media, is the greatest power in this world today.

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