Evolution of Social Media in 2009

But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie. Social media, in essence, is bumping up against its own ceiling, no longer able to serve the needs of those living within its walls…

Lets face it, social media today is a mess. I say this with love nonetheless. Yes I love blogging, yes I admire twitter, and I appreciate LinkedIn. However with so many channels competing for my profile, I am constantly trying to keep up with friends across all the various channels just to exchanges “Hey what’s up”. Case in point the advent to several applications that summarized your and your friends’ activities on Twitter – Friendfeed, etc. With so many social networks with so much of social media, our respective online selves are practically encroaching on multiple personality complex. If you are one who has spread yourself thin across the social media-scape or you are one who is in the business of monetizing on Social Media, readwriteweb, publishes an article, providing glimpse into the changing face of social media. It points to 10 areas of consideration:

Its about people where real people are seeking real meaningful connection and self expression
Creating meaning and value in the social interaction online just like people seek to do offline – where the topics are relevant, interactions simultaneous and organic
Enabling Convergence for allowing people to see their multitude social profiles and activities of their social networks in one consolidated platform helping them make sense of it all
Building a true cross-platform experience where people want to be connected on their own terms demanding high degree of reliability and access no matter what their device of choice – iPhone, laptop, etc.
Creating relevant Social Network that provide users the ability to connect around things that they love and not a generic cookie cutter platform with vague topics or no topics at all. People now demand ROI on their social presence in replies, comments, and their ability to influence
Innovating in the advertising space will need to produce semantically aware ads that target niche demographics. Blanket, non-relevant, and non-semantic ad placements are increasingly losing market
Helping people organize their old-school social media ecosystem where people using consolidation and tagging systems to tag, morph, organize, and make sense of bits of information (video, pictures, articles, product, conversation, gossip, etc.) they encounter through their every day internet usage. With so much information, people are starting to demand ways to cut and re-organize information in their own style and fashion
Connecting with the rest of US and the world, especially when social media sites like YouTube have been so successfully utilized by the current president of US both during his campaign and current presidency
Preparing for new social media jobs where “new job descriptions will call on subject-matter experts who can plan for relevant interaction within networks and aggregating platforms and bring together products, services, and people.”
Making money through increased symantically targeted ads, revenue and user sharing between strategic partners, and selling virtual goods to augment people’s virtual presence are some of the emerging sweet spots of the new social media.

Summarized from:

10 Ways Social Media will change in 2009 by Ravit Lichtenberg

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