Social Media is hot and it looks to get even hotter for 2011. If you own a business, you need to be aware of the social media trends for the coming year. At some point, social media may bring in big money for you.
Riffing on Harvard Business Reviews Six Social Media Trends for 2011, here is my list of the biggest trends of 2011:
- Integration. Companies big and small are going to integrate social media to all facets of their business. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can login to your Verizon account in the near future via Facebook Connect.
- Tablets and mobile devices will become king. I’m already a huge user of accessing the internet through my mobile device. The only thing slowing me down is the network. With 4G access being rolled out by all of the major carriers, expect the mobile computing experience to be even better. With Google’s announcement that tablets will be shipped with limited free access, social networking will become ubiquitous.
- Facebook rules location. Location was the hot new thing for 2010 with Gowalla and Foursquare. But Foursquare is simply a superficial check in game with lame corporate sponsorships and a relatively small user base. People will still be interested in the social aspects of finding their friends while out and about. But all of their friends are on Facebook. Look for Facebook to take control of location and act like Mike Tyson and knock Gowalla and Foursquare out.
- Too many social media chooses leads to consolidation of the social graph. With everyone and their mother creating new social networks (just look at the new Google Chrome App store to view a few of them), people are going to look to a few to integrate their social media presence. The big winners here are the big boys: Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.
- Google crushes it in 2011. With information everywhere, Google will continue to do what it does best: find everything on the web. Its search engine is getting better by the day in finding information on social networks such as Twitter. In addition, Facebook will never be able to access anything that happened before 2006.
What do you think of these social media trends? How do you see things turning out differently for 2011?
Related articles
- A Look at Social Media Trends for 2011 (So Far) (techaffect.com)
- 2010?s 5 most engaging social-media stories (smartblogs.com)
- Six Social Media Trends for 2011 – David Armano – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
