Social networking and community engagement technology made easy

The Economist asked the question, “What will the future of social networking look like?” Some examples include hopping in your car and asking your navigation system to guide you to a friend’s house. All the while, the navigation system is also alerting your friend that you are on your way over. Another example would be that your digital video recorder automatically records a show that all of your friends are talking about online.  Thus, if this is the future of social networking, then we are indeed heading toward a socialised state.

The most powerful device that is moving us toward this state is the mobile phone.  In the social media report by the Economist, it pursues that:

“Using a web-enabled phone to post status updates and send messages is still a niche activity in many countries, but it will rapidly become a mainstream one as mobile-broadband services overtake fixed-line ones in a few years’ time. One estimate by eMarketer suggests that just over 600m people will use their phones to tap into social net- works by 2013, a more-than-fourfold increase on last year’s 140m.”

If you think about it, mobile phones have yet to reach every market in the world. There is still so much room for growth:

“Companies such as Sembuse in Kenya, which bills itself as east Africa’s first mobile social network, and South Africa’s Mxit are already gearing up to connect millions more people to one another through their mobile phones, providing a big fillip to the amount of information sharing going on around the world.”

That is one aspect of it. Add in geo-networking apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which are two of the most popular, and you can keep your friends connected with you everywhere you are. I’ve heard the question asked, how much information is too much information? Even though the answer to that question will vary from person to person, those who live social media on a daily basis will most likely say that they really enjoy sharing their lives with thousands, perhaps millions of people.

Of course not everyone is going to be okay with giving away so much information. But for those who are, it’s the natural evolution of a social network. The Economists said the following:

“The networks’ founders seem to have an almost Utopian belief in the benefits that their creations will deliver. Facebook’s Mr Zuckerberg, for example, describes the greater openness he believes his firm and others like it are bringing to human interactions as probably the greatest transformative force in our generation, absent a major war.”

Social media empowerment

Are we now empowered? I certainly believe there is social media empowerment on every end of the spectrum, whether it is business or personal. By creating platforms, software programs and technology that create an atmosphere for sharing, we are making the dream of the Internet’s founder, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, dream.

In his book, Weaving the Web, he explained that the Internet was always meant to be more of a social creation than a technical one. The ultimate goal, he wrote, was to come up with something that, first and foremost, would make it easier for people to collaborate with one another.

Many people I have come across over the years and had the privilege of making their acquaintances’ are using the web and social media platforms for just that. Companies and organisations who have been utilising and creating their own social networks are using it for that. With technology comes a whole new game. We move from individuals coming up with great ideas and perhaps not knowing how to implement them, to a vast voice with a community to stand behind you and help you succeed. That is the power in a socialised state. Welcome to Web 3.0.

posted by Piers Hogarth-Scott in the category Social Media Social networking Web 3.0
Tags: Foursquare, Gowalla, The Economist, Tim Berners-Lee