What does 2010 hold for Social Media.

I've really embraced the standard set of social media & networking tools in the last 6 months and have really changed my opinion of them. So I have reviewed the 2 most common tools associated with social media and look to see how they will change in 2010.

I find facebook to be a valuable tool to connect with friends overseas and at home, and stay connected to them and maintain my friendship and relationships with them even if distance seperates us. Of course there are many 'apps' that you can add that are very game like, but it's easy enough to keep away from them. As a whole facebook can be like picking up the phone or sending a text message, but you talk when the other person logs in next.

At the other end of the spectrum, I use to see twitter as a waste of time. However I started to follow people I have long respected, which led me to access their 'friends'. From there it snowballs like a pyramid marketing scheme or viral ad. I now use twitter as a fantastic business learning tool, with added benefits of networking with likeminded people and following trends you are interested in. Again establishing connections with people in the form of a "follow" can promote you in your field if what you say is 'retweeted' within the community and seen as valuable, but for those with many followers I could imagine it all gets too much and they will likely limit lists to real personal connections. Of course the problem with twitter is that there is alot of junk that floats past your stream as well, so there is a need to fish the stream to find the juiciest fish.

There are many other tools used to connect with others and share information such as twitter add-ons to share photos, videos, presentations etc, tools to shorten URLs (to save all important characters), tools to share bookmarks with community, virtual meetings that then become real time.

My summary - I see the strengths of these tools being exploited in much greater detail. I think this year will really start to see the tools gain even wider adoption within business areas, but also evolve as more tools are created, especially to take advantage of portability being delivered by the smart phones now becoming more commonplace. The risk is the sheer volume of the information that potentially can be delivered in the stream ie the stream becoming a torrent or a flood of information that can no longer be controlled and the person gets swept away by an information deluge. I hope a combination of smart mining and sorting tools and also a stronger sense of community, knowledge sharing, collaboration, innovation and creativity will flourish in this environment in the comming year as we rebuild businesses in new and exciting ways.