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.

Twitter tools that can help

Hello out there is anyone twittering me?

Twitter is a great personal and social communications platform.
But that's not all you can use it for. Here are some interesting, loopy, and just plain cool tools that allow you to do more than talk to friends.

PIMPY3WASH OK, so maybe you can't use this and it's only designed for one person, but PIMPY3WASH is the neatest washing machine hack I've seen, so I had to include it. Ryan Rose, a programmer for TiVo, had trouble remembering when his clothes were ready to come out of the washing machine.

To fix that problem, he hacked it to alert him via text message on Twitter when his clothes were ready for the dryer. So far, his hack isn't available for other users, although you can subscribe to the feed to learn more about Rose's washing schedule than you probably wanted to know. But I hope it's just a matter of time until Whirlpool finds a way to let you use Twitter to track when your load of laundry is ready to be taken out.

Trackthis TrackThis is a neat Twitter tool that tracks shipments to you from FedEx, UPS, USPS, or DHL, and tweets you back whenever there's an update from the courier. To use TrackThis, all you need to do is surf to the site and input the courier and tracking number.

After you've started following TrackThis on Twitter, it will send you a tweet each time there's an update. I've used it three times in the past week and within just a few minutes, it informed me that my package was getting closer. This tool is a keeper. (Previous review.)

Botanicalls Botanicalls is probably one of the most outrageous products I've ever heard of. I want it.

Botanicalls is a gadget that you assemble (soldering irons and knowledge of electronics is required) and place into the soil a plant is in. It measures moisture in the soil and connects to an Ethernet port on your router to transmit data to Twitter or your mobile phone. In order to use the tool's Twitter feature, you'll need to create a new Twitter account with the name of your Botanicalls unit and follow that account.

Once complete, Botanicalls will send you tweets each time the plant needs watering. It costs $99.99, though, and as we said, assembly is required. London's Tubes I've seen London's tubes. They're not pretty during rush hour and sometimes, they get clogged. That's why developer Tom Morris, has created a series of Twitter accounts that users can follow to get updates on London's metropolitan transit system.

Twitter accounts like @Tubebakerloo and @tubecircle update at different times throughout the day to give Londoners all the information they need to find out if where they're going is crowded. Update: Rafe just tried this, and the first update he saw was frightening.

Twitddict Twitddict provides a useful service when Twitter cannot. It lets you continue tweeting when Twitter is down. If you're the kind of person who just can't get enough of Twitter, and the Fail Whale throws you into fits of rage, Twitddict allows you to keep tweeting.

Once the service is back up, Twitddict places all the tweets you made during the downtime in your timeline almost immediately. Neat. Twitsay Text is so 2008. Why not update your Twitter stream with some audio? Twitsay allows you to do just that. After signing up for the service and providing it with your Twitter username and password, you can call the designated Twitsay number for your country and place a voice message.

Once complete, that voice message will be placed in your Twitter stream for all your followers to enjoy. Can you say, audio RickRoll? FuelFrog FuelFrog lets you use Twitter to track your car's fuel use. After signing up with FuelFrog, it asks you to input your Twitter username, type of car, miles driven, price of gas, and amount of gas you put into your car to fill it up. Once complete, FuelFrog will begin tracking what kind of mileage your car gets. You can input all that information on the FuelFrog site, but it's much easier to do it through Twitter.

After following FuelFrog, you only need to send a tweet to the service with all the aforementioned information about your car. From there, FuelFrog will calculate your real miles per gallon and provide you with trend information on its site.

Remember The Milk Remember The Milk helps you keep track of things you need to do.

Once you sign up for the service, you can send a direct message to @RTM on Twitter. Once received, the service will compare your username to what it has on file and send your request to your in-box.

For example, if you want to remember to pick up dog food on the way home, you can log on to your Twitter account and send a direct message to @RTM, saying "remember the dog food." It will then send a message to your in-box reminding you of your responsibility. It works well, it's free, and it's worth trying out.