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.

Touring the Virtual World in Our Pajamas and Slippers

As virtual world interfaces are gaining popularity, many believe this breakthrough technology would become the future means by which we access information.

Second Life, a popular virtual world, allows users ("residents") to interact and collaborate through customized avatars. Its objective is to offer cost-effective, innovative solutions by integrating virtual world into our traditional real world setting. Second Life has particularly wide application in the education environment. Popular use includes serving as classroom replacements, classroom enhancements, recruiting tools, and self-directed learning tools. Specific benefits include:

• Allows teachers or professors to reuse class materials easily
• Enables the university to offer classes to students around the globe
• Imposes low hardware requirements on students
• Provides an experience that is uniform and compatible to various platforms
• Uses generic tools that are recyclable between classrooms and universities
• Integrates with in-world tools, such as furniture and text-entry equipment, to tailor a classroom setting according to one's needs
• Allows educators to create, monitor, and investigate 'interactive experiments' in science
• Allows users to observe different aspects of the weather and meteorology monitoring lab
• Allows higher education's graduate programs to advertise its capabilities and recruit new students
• Offers interactive teaching tools for self-directed learning, progresses at an individual's own pace and availability

Yale University has created two Second Life islands with two projecrs. The first was a simulation project of the recreation of the Seeley J. Mudd Library on Second Life. The second project was the design of a virtual paper mill on Second Life in which students can explore the mill's operations including the machinery and processes. Both projects offer effective, inexpensive, and seemingly real experiences that would otherwise be unattainable.

Other interesting applications of virtual worlds can be found in purchasing, trading, and social gaming. People purchase virtual gifts at relatively inexpensive price for others and for themselves. For example, people can purchase Facebook gift items, Farm Coins and Cash for Farmville, or Xbox accessories for avatars. These micropurchases can amount to big venue for the creators of such products. Virtual goods are high in intangible value because gift-giving allow people to spread love and "exchange sentiments" with one another. People bought accessories, either to upgrade their avatars or enhance their gaming experience, allow them to express their uniqueness and assert their identities. In the virtual gaming environment, researches are being conducted to study gamers' behavior, which will offer insights to enhancing future gaming experience.

With virtual world interface gaining ground like lightning one obvious question is, when virtual world sales are becoming so quickly, how is that going to impact the real world economy? In other words, if we are satisfied with doing everything in a virtual world, then would we be needing clothing other than pajamas and slippers?

Sources:

Hand, Randall. "Learning in Second Life: Virtual Education VizWorld.com." VizWorld.com - Visualization, Computer Graphics, and Animation. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.

O'Donnell, Jayne. "Unlike reality, virtual retail sales are hot, especially for avatars." News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World - USATODAY.com. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.

Patuwo, Grace. "Yale Daily News - Virtual world, real money in 'Second Life'" Yale Daily News - The Nation's Oldest College Daily. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.

Schonfeld, Erick. "Augmented Reality Vs. Virtual Reality: Which One Is More Real?" TechCrunch. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.

"Understanding interaction in virtual worlds." Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Web. 21 Feb. 2010