Editor’s Note: We asked a number of thoughtful individuals to share their predictions for “Social Trends 2011…” We decided to roll with Gary’s first – since he was not only the first to respond, but we’ve known him for a couple years and he’s a really good guy. Here goes:
Social Trends 2011…Gary Unger, Creative Genius
Social Trends 2011 will look dramatically different.
Gazing into my murky yet occasionally brilliantly clear crystal ball, you’ll see some unexpected mergers, buyouts, bankruptcies, give ups, and technology expansion.
• Twitter will buy BrightKite so users can post pictures directly into Twitter instead of using third party sites.
• Twitter will also start putting ads on pages or forced into an account’s stream of friends posts. Ads each account will see will be based on algorithms of age, words used, friends, etc.
• That algorithm will kill the mass following trend. The more people you follow the more ads you’ll get because of the variety of people you follow. So people will cut down on how many people they follow.
• MySpace will give up trying to compete as a social network and become a media promotion site. Meaning if you are a band, movie maker, internet radio, podcaster and even webinar host MySpace will be for you.
• MySpace will be less social, more promotion.
• MySpace will then be bought out by Citrix.
• Facebook will limit friend amounts to 1000 unless you are a celebrity.
• Facebook will force people with more than 1000 friends to a modified fan type page.
• Facebook will become the next Microsoft in respects to viruses, worms, denial of service attacks, monopoly lawsuits, antitrust suits, and the whole love/hate relationship
• Facebook will be forced against its will and corporate heads’ personal political leanings to be less vocal about who it supports.
• Facebook will be the next polling place for the media to use as to how many people voted and likely winners.
• Plaxo will file bankruptcy
• LinkedIn will quietly keep plugging along and dominate the business network.
• LinkedIn will allow a section for “media coverage” a place on your profile where you can post any media coverage you have received.
• LinkedIn will develop its own internal “twitter” app where business can update sales, travel, product launch, etc.
• LinkedIn will develop its own webinar hosting site.
My major predictions for 2011
• The NFL will allow sponsored tweets from coaches (well maybe their assistants standing next to them will do the typing) live during the game
• Televisions will come with keyboards and built in cameras.
• Televisions will come with social media apps built into them. And will have the option of letting others automatically know what you are watching. ….which could be a bad thing.
• Translation software will be built into social media so native only speakers can read, talk or type with foreign only speaking people across the globe.
• Webinars will outpace social media as a marketing tool.
All that to say these predictions will cause certain trends in the social networking realm, mainly massive amounts of “unfollows.” People will begin to unfollow companies because while it is one thing to be associated with a brand, like wearing its T-shirt, having them send me contest invites and requesting free feedback to their benefit and not ‘mine’ will be less enticing. I’ll wear the T-shirt, just don’t call me everyday/week mentality. This will cause many companies to close most if not all their social media sites and or departments –layoffs in an already slow economy. Other unfollow trends will result because of third party needed apps. The reason being that if “I need an app to insert into my social app to track only the people I want to follow, I might as well just not follow those other people.” The only exception to having or following lots of people will be news sites. The news will want to follow as many people as it can so that it can get news stories first and from a variety of free sources. Also, news in general will be the dominate poster of tweets, updates, etc. Individual postings will drop.
….that and zombies will settle the moon.
To find Gary, visit his site at garyunger.com.
