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)

The Biggest Challenge for Augmented Reality

I admit I love all kinds of new technologies and Augmented Reality (AR) is interesting to say the least. It will further blur the lines between Cyburbia and the physical world with how we interact with things. It will also futher expand the wealth of information and increase the scarcity of attention. In a post today on GigaOm they had some great pics showing how AR might work. That got me thinking of what will be a barrier to entry.

To me, that would seem to be “geolocation” by a user. Research has shown that less than 0.23% of smart phone users willingly enable themselves to be known in their mobile use. We’re increasingly becoming aware of our privacy.

Many AR apps will require that you allow the device to show the world where you are. Certainly if you’re having an affair on a supposed “business trip” you’re not going to want that feature enabled. Personally, I don’t enable that level of connecting.

We’ve not seen any major Web/Mobile app that enables geolocation for the service to work really take off and be mainstream accepted. Perhaps the under 20 age group will enable such services?

But right now, the one major hurdle for AR acceptance to really go mainstream is people allowing themselves to be known to their mobile character and everyone else when they engage in AR apps.

What do you think? Will you enable geolocating when AR becomes more available?

Will There Be Too Many Media Channels?

What’s “new media” now? We’ve hit the “500 channel universe” on the telly, the Web has become truly “interactive”, smart phones are ramping up for mobile use. We’re texting, tweeting, calling, voice mailing, videoing, gaming in vast virtual realities; creating and sharing content like never before in the history of mankind.

And now on the bleeding edge is “Augmented Reality” (AR) technologies. Think of it as your personal digital butler (see a video of Yelp’s Monocle in use here) using your smart phone to find out information about the real-world objects around you. Add in the ability to instantly add your 2 cents on a restaurant you just ate at or a coffee buying experience – well, you get the idea. We’ve added a whole new media channel. And as McLuhan said, the medium is shaped by how we use it. Will people use it and shape it? It’s simple enough to use. We’re already commenting on things. Then there’s Microsoft’s Natal project for the xbox.

My one area of concern over AR technologies is that studies have already shown people are reticent to use geo-location in their smart phones (less than .23% of mobile users in UK & USA). Using AR technologies requires some loss of privacy; are consumers willing to give more up?

More than anything, I just wonder, how many channels can we as citizens deal with and how many channels can marketers, PR pro’s etc., manage effectively? A lot of our research helps guide companies more effectively, but going from budgeting for 20 channels to 180 and then measuring effectiveness? When many metrics are still being debated and are yet to be defined?

What do you think? When is enough enough? At what point do we see channel decay in media formats? Or will we change?