The Future of Social Networking...or is there?

To conclude my blog, I thought that it would be interesting to see where social networking's future lies, or even if there is a future at all. I stumbled upon a blog called 'PDA The Digital Content Blog' and there was an article about a conversation that took place at Oxford University last Monday, where multiple CEOs of social networking sites came to discuss whether or not social networks are the Internet's last big development. The first to speak was Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal. He reminded everyone of where in history we are. Explaining that in 2002 even experts missed the fact that Google was the number one search engine. He posits the idea that we don't know whether we are in the early or late stage, and that we are maybe at the end of Internet innovation in it's entirety. This seems largely out of proportion because there are sites that are expanding and opening themselves up to new forms of technology and ideas.

One of these is Twitter. One of Twitter's cofounders Biz Stone, weighs in with the idea that he believes "in a trend of openness". He explains that Twitter is not a social networking site rather a "information network". This is absolutely true because it has been used in political situations like the Iranian election protests. Stone says, "On a large scale, the open exchange of information can even lead to positive global impact. If people are more informed they are more engaged, and if they are more engaged they are more empathic. They are global citizens, not just a citizen of a nation." If we look at the Obama election, we see a very similar methodology where open-endedness, open-information were used in order to get so many people more involved in the election. The future seems to be here, that rapid contribution from individuals to mass audiences is the fastest, most efficient way that information is transfered. This is interesting because people who make measly 140 character tweets are helping change the world just by spreading information. However, this does not necessarily guarantee longevity for social networks.

This is when Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google, weighed in. He said, "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 form where it is going to the US." The way in which people use mobile devices to access data in these places is such that of a desktop computer user. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are the main wave of opportunity and creation of information--the social is the now. Shriram states, "There will be new distribution and consumption patterns which will impact society". He even makes predictions that Facebook will replace email, chat will become a multimedia format, and that Apple will be successful because of its strong mobile focus. A very bold prediction in my mind is that Facebook will replace email because there are so many email platforms available. But, I could see it being used more and more as people are finding that opening mail in different platforms inconvenient. Also since Facebook has taken on this WebOS approach, there has been less and less time spent on other applications other than Facebook's. However, I do not think that it will ever amount to Mac OS or Windows--Biz Stone might say this is close-minded.

The last CEO to weigh in was Reid Hoffman, a graduate from Stanford who founded LinkedIn. He says, "I actually think we are just beginning to see how people launch the eventualities of social network into their life" and he compares this to how 'mobile phones had grown from a tool for bankers to a part of everyone's life'. The interesting and good point Hoffman make sis that people treat online information like ice cream. He says, "It is not nutritious, but people still eat it." I think that this is valid because people will always eat up information that is on social networks, we loved being entertained and one of the biggest components of entertainment is gossip. But, this still doesn't answer the questions posed. Where is social networking going? Is it stagnate? Is this the end? Hoffman believes this isn't the end and that with all of this data, you have a breeding ground for new applications.

Oxford lecturer, Dr.. Kate Blackmon summed up the discussion with the idea that 'the future was not about crowd sourcing but crowd filtering.' So social networks must find ways to make use of the stream of information that is being poured into them. I would agree with Biz Stone idea that social networks must follow the trend of openness. It will be the challenge of figuring out how we can utilize this massive amount of data, how social networking data can be used to create applications that both serve the world and help the individual. Twitter may be a strong example of what the future of social networks looks like, a crowdsourced data hub in which people filter information that they want to get the latest news. In cases of politics and disasters, Twitter shows that it can help the world and the individual. However, I am not so sure that all social networks will have this capability to move in this direction. In addition, I believe that there will be a ton of innovation around making data more relevant, more easily accessible, and more accurate. For me there does not seem to be an end for social networks, but rather an end to the lack of use social networking data.

_________________________________________________________________

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/24/future-of-social-networks-twitter-linkedin-mobile-application-next