Predictions on Social Media Trends

With the growing popularity of social media, it is conceivable that social networking sites will become more sophisticated, more niche specific, and more integrated. Specifically, some predicted social media trends are listed as follows:

• More televisions will be available through the Internet
  
  As evident in the recent March Madness NCAA Men Basketball Tournament, NCAA and CBS jointly announced the viewing of the games through the NCAA website. Other available sites include Hulu, Boxee, Apple TV and Netflix.


• More companies will establish and enforce a social media policy
  
  In order to protect itself from reduced productivity and increased security risks, a company will have to define specific policies and procedures for governing its employees on the use of social media.
  
• Social media will become more exclusive and less general
  
  New social media will be less general and more niche-based, targeting specific group of audience or special interest groups (sports, jobs, music, etc). User behavior will change as more people will look for quality and efficiency rather than quantity.


• Businesses will leverage social networking tools to satisfy more business areas
  
  Besides marketing and advertising online, companies will use social media for customer support, recruiting and collaborating.
  
• Companies will rely more on web analytics for performance measurements
  
  Besides using web analytics to measure the effectiveness of its websites, business will also use such information to determine how well its staff (or which staff particularly) is supporting its customers and what competitive advantages it has over its competitors. Rating on websites by customers will also be more common.


• Mobile technology will be more integrated with social media
  
  Individuals will be relying on their mobile phones to connect to the web, and perform the internet functions via their mobile devices. The use of traditional emails as communication will become obsolete.


• More content aggregation in social media to improve efficiency
  
  Search engines will return more content and less links, thus reducing the time in locating information. An example is the partnering of Yahoo and Twitter to deliver Yahoo’s content into Twitter’s stream.

With these growing trends in social media, the questions are (1) Will the increased in demand of TV via Internet cause a more serious bandwidth issue? (2) Will the investment cost in social media grow exponentially due to demand for high-power equipment and the need for more secured information?

Sources:
Social Media Band Wagon Image.

Armano, David. "Six Social Media Trends for 2010 - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review." Business Management Ideas - Harvard Business Review Blogs. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Cashmore, Pete. "10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Diaz, Sam. "Yahoo and Twitter Partner to Mesh the Content from Both Worlds Between the Lines ZDNet.com." ZDNet Technology News. 23 Feb. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Tobin, Jim. "5 Predictions on The Future of Social Media Ignite Social Media." Ignite Social Media -- the Original Social Media Agency. 28 July 2008. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Unlimited Collaboration - Anything. Anywhere. Anytime.

It all began when the Internet came, when can access large amount of information at our fingertips. Then we learned more, transformed more, and expected more. Today, our lives are changed forever and many of us find it painful to live without the Internet even for just one day!

Online collaboration has become popular not only in business organizations, but also government and education institutions. There is a whole spectrum of services to choose from, including browser-based team dashboards, online conferences with video capabilities, resource and document sharing, calendars, and scheduling of events, etc. Companies including Microsoft, IBM, and Google are competing intensely on their offerings of collaboration products to gain market dominance.

The Obama administration has place heavy emphasis on transparency and open government, and appointed the first CIO and CTO for its country. Propelled by the open source software movement, the administration promotes the concept of open government and uses collaborative technologies to solve collective problems at various levels of government.

Today, education institutions throughout the country are focusing more in technology education. More and more students are learning to use web 2.0 technologies to communicate, collaborate, and work together in and out of classrooms. Tools such as the wiki, blogs, videoconferencing, and online chat are adopted to induce creativity, and encourage communication and collaboration among students worldwide. This transformation is also aimed at better preparing the students when they join the workforce.

Like many organizational changes, online collaboration can be successful only if it is embraced by a supportive corporate culture. Such a culture must possess elements that foster trust, such as

• Offering flexible work schedules to employees (and allows telecommuting and off-site workers)
• Willing to share corporate information and project artifacts with others
• Willing to be available for discussing work matters beyond office hours
• Building a team of technically savvy employees
• Providing management support to this new mode of co-working

In the school environment, educators have reported problems associated with the use of online collaboration as follows:

• Not every student has a computer at home to collaborate after school
• Students tend to waste time and become distracted easily when online
• Students use non-authoritative sources and inappropriate materials
• Loss of efficiency caused by technical glitches with computer tools and limited bandwidth
• Restriction placed on web access

As pointed out in the assigned articles, the real benefit of online collaboration does not come from the nifty technologies themselves, but rather from the creative ways in which organizations make the best use of these technologies to meet their business objectives.

Sources:
Alloway, Kristen. "Students Discovering Online Collaboration." New Jersey Local News, Breaking News, Sports & Weather - NJ.com. 07 Nov. 2009. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

Clancy, Heather. "Collaborate Using Online Tools - PCWorld Business Center." Reviews and News on Tech Products, Software and Downloads - PCWorld. 20 Apr. 2008. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

Kelly, Will. "Corporate Culture, Not Technology, Drives Online Collaboration." WebWorkerDaily. 23 Oct. 2009. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

Lathrop, Daniel, and Laurel Ruma. "Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice." News for Greater Kansas City - Kansas City InfoZine News. 15 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

Orenstein, Gary. "The Cloud Collaboration Wars Ramp Up." GigaOM. 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Mar. 2010.

The World of Freebies

Let's face it, everyone loves freebies. The Internet offers many of them, from free movie passes, to free meals, to free music, etc, at a single click.

Is the Internet Making Us Dumber? The answer to this question can be a "yes"or "no" depending how you look at it.

There are certainly many benefits associated with Internet usage. It enables people to:

• pool in their resources and share their knowledge with others,
• develop creative ideas from the suggestions of others,
• find information quickly so that tasks are accomplished more efficiently and effectively,
• expand knowledge base (sometimes out of curiosity) through search engine like Google,
• get connected to one another globally. When people update their statuses on Facebook or Twitter, all of their friends know what they are up to.

However, there are some drawbacks involved if people do not use the Internet properly.

• Lifestyle change may cause loss of culture or tradition. Back in the day when computers were not available, people would spend more time reading newspaper or magazine, allowing them to gain knowledge about the world. Nowadays, many people depend on the Internet for their information needs, and they read only those issues that are eye-catching and quickly get distracted by other information.

• People spend too much time on social networking sites. They are too busy in catching up with everyone's excitement and drama.

• People may not be able to distinguish reliable information from the unreliable ones on the Internet. Many people fall for unknown schemes or scams, and end up giving out personal identification information to strangers or marketing firms.

My view of the Internet includes the following:

• People need to know how credible a source is - whether it is a "user-generated" opinion or a proven or well-supported fact. Thus, they should verify their sources carefully before using them. Even familiar websites like ratemyprofessors.com or fandango.com may offer limited and biased information on students' opinion about a professor (or a class), or viewers' feedback about a movie.

• There is a bright and dark side to the Internet. The bright side is that "anyone can publish, collaborate, and edit others' work" with little restrictions. The dark side is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to control what people publish and edit, which may be offensive or inappropriate at times.

• Technology is constantly evolving. Undoubtedly, people need to embrace this intellectual change so that they do not fall behind. It is important that people be educated on the power and danger of the Internet. This enables them to optimize social media usage while protecting themselves from unwarranted web intruders and identify theft.

• As consumer culture (e.g. ad campaigns) is built in as part of the Internet, it further encourages the additive behavior in people. Thus self-discipline in terms of time and resource management is extremely important to avoid lollygagging (being lazy and avoid work), just like what TV turns people into couch potatoes.
  

Sources:

Keen, Andrew. "The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes - Associations Now Magazine - Publications and Resources -." ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership. Web. 30 Jan. 2010.

Riley, Duncan. "Nobel Laureate Says The Internet Makes Us Dumb, We Say: Meh." TechCrunch. Web. 30 Jan. 2010.

Freebies Digital Image.