13. The Future of Social Media

What's good y'all? I had a very fun and exciting weekend and I hope you did also. For this week's post I decided to Google: "future social media trends". I quickly found two articles which made predictions about future trends.

The first article I read is by Jim Tobin and he believes that social media is in its infancy period right now, which I agree with. He made one very interesting prediction that caught my eye, he believes that social networks will become open. What he means by that is that there will be a utility tool which will connect all social media sites together and allow you to travel easily among them. This would be a very cool feature but I am not sure how close we are to something like that.

The second article is by David Armano about trends for 2010. He predicts that social media will become more popular and more mobile but less social as well with niche social networking sites gaining popularity and more exclusivity. Another prediction he brought up is something that will effect most of us: the company you work for will soon have a social media policy regarding things you post and what is allowed.

Both articles I would recommend checking out. Also check out this great marketing tool: http://snipr.com/v6ecv. Anyways, the Bosssss is done for this week...time for bed. 1 HUNDO.

5. Marketers Need to Catch Up

Just finished watching the super bowl and I couldn't be more satisfied with result (Colts/Manning lose and everyone at Mardi Gras will be going even crazier when I arrive in NO later this week). This week I read 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging along with Conversational Marketing: Word of Mouse.

I think that corporate blogging and advertising on social media sites are very much the same with corporate blogs being less visible. However, they both encounter the similar problems. With that being said marketers need to adapt. I feel as though most corporate blogs/Facebook fan pages treat their sites purely as press releases and are missing the point completely. They are just following the crowd and making these pages because everyone else is too but with no real direction as to why they are doing so.

In order to connect with consumers in a social setting, marketers need to realize that people need to feel engaged and as though they are communicating/making a connection with a human being and not just become another number apart of the corporation's blog circle/fan page.

I believe that facebook, myspace, and twitter have and will continue to change advertising but I do not believe corporate blogging will have the same effect. I think that creating a following via social media sites is much more feasible than creating a corporate blog because it is easier to get your voice out. I understand you can post links to your blog from these social media sites but lets be serious...no one is going to click on these links.

In the end, marketers and corporations should focus more time and effort into developing their presence on social media sites as opposed to corporate blogs because they present more opportunities to connect with users.

No school tomorrow...think it's time to start another snowball fight! Hope everyone enjoys the day off as much as the Bosssssssssss. Until next time y'all.

4. Ignorance is Bliss

Hope everyone had a great weekend (I'm still depressed about Kobe's game winner vs the Celtics today but ill save that for another time).

This week the Boss will discuss articles by Duncan Riley and Andrew Keen where each author takes an opposing view of the internet and web 2.0.

I want to start off by saying I completely agree with Duncan Riley. I believe he is a little harsh towards Doris Lessing, but feel as though he wanted to make his position clear. I believe that Doris Lessing is just one of those old people that is stuck in their ways and is ignorant to the power of the internet. She probably thinks the internet is only social media and meaningless blogs (which to an extent it is) but what Doris is forgetting about or ignorant to are the numerous benefits that the internet gives us. The internet provides users with infinite amount of knowledge at their disposal along with the ability to share ideas and compare views. There are so many people in the world who know about certain things that they would have never known about if not for the internet.

In regards to Andrew Keen, I see him as an author who is taking a bold stand against a popular tool (the internet/web 2.0) in order to make himself relevant and maybe even make a couple bucks with his new book. For example, he starts his article off with a bragpost about how he was on The Colbert Report and implies that Colbert is a web 2.0 elitist as well while giving no evidence that this is so. He seems to really relish in his elitist views.

Keen argues that the internet provides less accurate and reliable portrait of the news than professionally edited newspapers, encyclopedias, or books which is something I completely disagree on. Most news stories on the internet have been cross referenced so many times by numerous sources that they are just as legitimate as information in print.

Keen appears to want to transform the internet into a closed gated community where people won't be google-ing for answers but they will search on Mahalo.com and DoneRight.com (professional search engines). He tries to forecast that expertise on the internet is going to be the next big thing which I applaud him for but he should really check out my blog post last week about crowdsourcing (I know, bragpost) and how the wave is only getting bigger.

***We must also keep in mind that Lessing and Keen are both authors so it makes sense that they would have negative views of the internet because the internet allows people access to so much stuff that odds are less people are going read their books, which probably annoys them to some degree.

In the end, I believe we should embrace the evolution and the power of the internet because it can be used as a great tool giving users limitless opportunities to make a positive impact on the world.

The Boss is done for now, time to cry myself to sleep over that Celtic's loss. We da best.