Social Media is Evolving

I'm in love with my 250,000 online friends.

Here is an edited version of Ravit Lichtenberg blog on this subject.
Please go here for the original post.

Meaning and connection are corroding by the day as people's ability to organize their experiences and find the relevance of their networks declines. Social Media is Evolving into a holistic experience that speaks to people's social needs in new ways.

1. It's About People We're moving away from "users," "customers," and "shoppers": social media is bringing back the human element to all digital interaction. People now deliberately seek meaningful connection, self-expression, and a relevant and receptive community.

2. Creating Meaning and Value "Social media online is no different from social media offline," said Brent Csutoras at a recent Social Media Club event. People will be looking for ways to keep their networks going regardless of device or platform. They will connect around meaningful topics and have live and simultaneous conversations within parameters they themselves define, which will bring relevance back to their interaction with others.

3. Enabling Convergence FriendFeed is growing rapidly because people are at a loss when it comes to pulling their conversations together from various sources and assigning meaning to them. Companies that deliver beautifully designed, easy-to-use, searchable, flexible, aggregating platforms will become more important than any social media tool by itself. Deb Schultz, a San Francisco-based web strategist, compares social media to an art exhibit and says people will "curate their live presence through the web ecosystem as needed."

4. Building a Truly Cross-Platform Experience The iPhone experience has changed the playing field for users, companies, and developers. In the new landscape of social media, people are seeking solutions that seamlessly cut across mobile, web, and live interaction, hopping on and off them like double-decker buses, all with the same pass.

5. Creating Relevant Social Networks People will create, join, and seek social networks that enable them to have meaningful and relevant experiences with each other. They will measure their return on investment in replies, comments, their ability to influence, and the value of their learning. Social network that grew a massive 388% in 2008... why... because it allows people to connect around the things they love making which makes social networks a very addictive way of communicating.

6. Innovating in the Advertising Space Ad publishers and the attached ecosystem will continue to lose revenue until they realign their understanding of what appeals to people who are conversing, connecting, and expressing. The next phase of social media is a gold mine of targeted niche demographics. Ad agencies and publishers that are able to quickly realign their thinking and create an innovative and relevant product discovery experience will gain significant competitive advantage.

7. Helping People Organize Their "Old" Social Media Ecosystem As aggregating platforms enter the field, people will seek to bring order to the endless bits of information available to them. Video tagging, conversation archiving, taking cloud computing to the next stage, and making search more relevant are some of the new baseline requirements. These represent a significant opportunity for companies willing to undertake this massive endeavor.

8. Connecting with the Rest of the US and the World In the next one to two years, the benefits of social media will cross the chasm and reach the mainstream, not only in the US but around the world. Companies will need to understand the explicit and implicit differences between adoption patterns in different countries and adjust their products to meet these different needs.

9. Preparing for New Social Media Jobs Companies are looking to divert marketing dollars to more targeted social media destinations. David Spark, founder of Spark Media Solutions, says that businesses will need to go beyond paying people to Tweet or put up a Facebook page. Social media's 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.

10. Making Money With the rise of aggregating platforms, social networks, and new mobile and location-based features, we're bound to see an increase in targeted and personalized ads, "freemium" packaging, revenue sharing between strategic partners, and a flow from the offline world to online social engagement. The new form of social media will be about creating "whole products" and complete experiences, all in real time, across the web, mobile, and live. Each user will be able to create his or her own experience using tools, features, and apps that magically coalesce. Innovative companies that are able to listen to these needs and deliver products based on them will not only survive but thrive in the coming months and years.