Social Media Tools of the Future

Just for fun, I was pondering what types of Social Media services there might be 5-10 years. So here’s some and maybe you’ve got one or two to add?

Privacy Chip: This will be a “chip” or chunk of software that automatically defines your privacy settings with any new Social Media service you sign up for, like the Disqus system for comment moderation on blogs. You pre-program your settings and it ensures only certain information is public.

Social Chip: Embedded data on your Social Networks and services, with privacy info defined by type of service (kind of like the Poken now, but embedded into your mobile and credit/debit cards with permission marketing levels.)

The Permission Card: Maybe it’s same size as a credit card, or maybe it’s loaded into your mobile device – essentially, it details what marketers can and can’t do with your contact info. You set the preferences on how marketers communicate with you, if they behave you can “rate” their behaviour.

The Anonomator: A little piece of bot software you control. It can go out and destroy any content across the web or a connected device that is negative about you. It coincides with your Privacy Chip for validation and Social Media services must comply….so when you discover those pics of you drunk at the party…

The One Device: It’s your mobile phone, includes your social chip and privacy chip data and can allow you to connect to publicly available terminals anywhere and has all your data there – text, audio, video, pics. It has your credit and debit card data, even your ability to vote in elections…everything digital.

Insta-Rater: Having lunch at a decent place and want to rate it? Aim your One Device at the code on the wall, rate it by stars, add a text note if you like…voila! all done, no registration process, your device handles all the validation, and it works with AR (Augmented Reality) services as well.

Have any ideas for the future of social technologies

(Author: G. Crouch)

Social Media Channel Decline by Users

We’re always doing research into how people are using Social Media, much of it for clients, much of it the result of the research we do for clients. One interesting trend we’ve noted over the past few months – people are turning off the garden hose. We’re learning to filter.

As humanity, we’ve suffered from “filter failure” ever since more books were printed than a human could read in their lifetime. All we’ve done is increase the volume, now more significantly.

When we do research for a client, we always look for the “power user” those engaged more than others. We also look at the Echo Ratio (our own stat based on the Solidarity Value of economics) and applying the Power Law Curve. I’m just stating our process here.

Up until 3 months ago, the average joe user of Social Media (i.e. engaged 5-10 hours per week in social media channels) had 5.4 channels they engaged in (that most often comprised in Canada, UK and USA of a social network, microblog, email, blog and one or two others.)

Over the past 3 months we’ve seen that decline quite significantly, down to an average of 3.25 apps per average user of social media channels.

Are we learning to apply filters? We’re now looking at heavier users. I like the posting recently from David Armano on a similar vein.

What do you think?

Why Email is Still the Killer App of Social Media

Because it’s boring. Email is boring.

But more people use email than Facebook or Twitter. Combined. Every day. Still.

Email spans a wider demographic range than any other social technology application. We’re already seeing (in our own research and others) that age groups are defining social technologies…more on that later.

Email is ridiculously simple and it’s boring. Across many age groups, we’ve mastered email, whether that’s via a Web interface like Gmail or Hotmail or if we have an email client like Mail or Entourage or Thunderbird. Most of us already have our various “groups” that we send stuff to. We don’t think about it, we just “forward”, “reply” or create new, copy/paste or drag/drop and hit “send.” And we’re done. Boring. That’s when social change comes about from a technology; when it becomes boring.

Jody Williams won a nobel peace prize for land mine activism – mostly using email and faxes. Two boring technologies.

The phone eventually enabled the ability to have 911 service, of which a TV show was created. Because it was boring and we all knew how to dial a phone. In the 1930′s phones were pretty much banned in offices.

Facebook is not an email “killer” because it’s still complicated and not boring yet. Same thing with Twitter.

A new social media technology that is now pretty much boring is SMS/txt messaging and perhaps the first instance of txt messaging benefiting society was Haiti – that most of the money raised in the US, Canada and UK was through SMS donations. In the 2005 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, it was txt messaging that played the key role in gathering people to protest the election results and promoted democracy. It’s getting boring.

So, what do you think? Is email still the number one social technology?

Social Media & Growing Privacy Issues

The buzz was abuzzin over Google’s launch of Buzz last week. The initial debate seemed to be whether or not Buzz would slam Twitter. Our quick monitoring on sentiment was 10:2 against Buzz winning that one.

Privacy however, quickly became the issue. Prompting Google to announce in just 2 days that they were making changes to the privacy setting.

Which sets up the whole issue of privacy, which occasionally bubbles to the surface of mainstream attention, simmers and boils again. As a connected “always on” society, well, we’re starting to deal with a whole lot of issues beyond just privacy.

Issues on such a broad societal scale that we’ve never before had to deal with.

One privacy issue out of Buzz that struck me was a woman trying to hide from an abusive ex-husband; Buzz was kind enough to connect her instantly again to him. Fail.

Then there’s companies like us, listening to the chatter to help companies and agencies engage in better marketing opportunities – we do however, strictly observe privacy laws in Canada, USA and UK where we operate. Just felt I should hang that out there.

So here are some of the issues we’ve seen bubbling to the top over privacy today:

1. Some people really don’t care

2. Some folk suggest that privacy is an illusion nowadays anyway

3. Others think you need to be exposed to some degree or you’ve got something to hide

4. Then there’s those who refuse to engage in being online at all. Are they missing out?

5. And then some are starting to lock things down; they’re there, but aware and learning to lock it down.

It’s a big issue. No clear cut answers.

What do you think? What are your privacy concerns? or are you?

Social Media & Political Action: When?

We haven’t really seen significant impact on politics in Canada, the USA or UK yet as a result of Social Media. You might be tempted to say “ah, but Obama used it well.” Yes, he did. But it was campaign stuff, slogans, videos, speeches. We’ve seen some effective use of Twitter in Egypt, Iran and attempts in Belorus.

In Canada the whole “prorogued” issue took off in Social Media and became a meme, and continues to thrive, albeit somewhat less so. But it didn’t result in the Prime Minister calling Parliament back. Discussions take place, there are plenty of political blogs, messages on Twitter and then there’s all those Facebook Groups; support this, protest that, save this. Nice. But still window dressing in the end.

I think there’s two factors at work here:

1) We’re still enamored with the capablities; making fun videos, sharing stuff, editing photo’s and such. I’d suggest we’re still in the “Honeymoon Phase” which I’ve suggested before. It’s all still new and fresh and fun. That will change.

2) It’s because it’s still in large part entertainment and to some degree, industrial media portrays it that way. Metrics to measure and understand Social Media are still in their infancy and there are no standards like there are with focus groups and polling mechanisms. That makes it hard for politicians and policy makers to take it seriously.

So if that’s the case, will Social Media become a serious contender for the attention of government policy makers and political parties? Absolutely.

One very important fact about Social Media: it enables the almost instantaneous formation of groups and the collaboration capabilities to enable consensus development.

We just haven’t seen real activism develop from a Facebook group that’s evolved into a determined political agenda resulting in regulatory, policy or legislative change.

That will happen. It’s starting. Some small groups are figuring that out. The US Government made a huge step with the Peer-To-Patent program. As government departments understand the collaborative and citizen-expert engagement advantages, Social Technologies will start to see deeper engagement between citizen and government. I give it 5-10 years. Look at how Innocentive is using such social technologies to solve problems.

What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch)