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.

Tapping into the Power of the Crowd

The phenomenal growth in the popularity of social networks has expanded its user base from individuals to include businesses of various sizes. Millions of people spend hours eacy day on multiple social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Contemporary businesses quickly respond to this trend by integrating social networks into their marketing strategy to gain visibility, connect to their customers, promote their products and services, and improve their bottom line.

While knowing how to tap into these social networks effectively can greatly benefit smart businesses, the adoption of social networking tools into the workforce can also pose major concerns such as lowering productivity and raising security threats. Some potential benefits and threats associated with integrating social networks into a business include the following:

The Benefits:

• Expand online contacts by establishing an impressive profile, thus minimizing costs associated with advertising and marketing efforts.
• Reach out to people personally by encouraging them to connect and become friends. This also extends connections to their network of friends as well.
• Present an online image of a business that is innovative, reputable, and reliable.
• Implement market campaigns such as special promotions, important announcements, and directed web links.

The Concerns:

• Reduce overall productivity when employees spend too much time on social networks during work hours.
• Lower company morale when some employees have to cover the workload for those who are addicted to social networking sites.
• Create problems for IT administrators to deal with high level of bandwidth usage when employees visit those sites with audio/video interfaces.
• Introduce spams and infecting malware when using third party applications within the social network sites. E.g. Koobaface worms associated with messaging software.
• Damage the company's reputation when disgruntled employees make derogatory comments about the company or when they are found to view sites with offensive and illegal content.

Faced with the dilemma of embracing this new way of online communication and confronting major security threats, companies have to decide how much access, if any, to grant their employees. Is it better to ban access to all social networking sites altogether, or grant full and unmonitored access, or settle somewhere in between? It appears that the option favored by most companies is to strike a balance by offering their employees restricted access and setting limits on Internet use. In doing so, they must also equip themselves with the following measures:

• Install current anti-virus software in all computers
• Set up a company firewall to guard against unauthorized access
• Establish and enforce company's security and Interney usage policy
• Monitor Internet usage by the employees and monitor social networking sites
• Grant employees restricted access and monitor access using web filtering software
• Conduct web security awareness training to all employees

The scary thing is that recent Facebook's privacy changes allows sharing of its users' information with other pre-approved third-party applications so that our friends would know about us, not just through Facebook, but through other sites that have alliance agreement with Facebook. Even scarier is that government agencies including the FBI and IRS also use social networking to piece together information as part of their clues to chase down criminals.

The question is: Is our life becoming public just because we joined social networking sites?

Sources:

Internet Addict Image.

Diaz, Sam. "Facebook Fan Pages Get Boost with 'Social Engagement Hub'" ZDNet Technology News. 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.

Dignan, Larry. "Facebook's Privacy Changes: When Will It Go Too Far (and Will You Even Notice)?" ZDNet Technology News. 29 Mar. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.

Dignan, Larry, Sam Diaz, and Andrew Nusca. "FBI, Feds Collect Facebook, Social Media Data; Why Are You Surprised?" ZDNet Technology News. 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.

Kelleher, David. "5 Problems with Social Networking in the Workplace." Information Management. 6 Oct. 2009. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.

Establishing Connections in a Spider Web of Social Networks

Besides serving as an effective way of connecting people globally, social networking has become a powerful tool for job hunting and recruiting. For job seekers, these online networks provide a perfect opportunity for marketing their capabilities. For recruiters, social networking tools allow them to locate candidates with specific experience and skills quickly and inexpensively. To make the best use of social media tools, the job hunters and the recruiters may consider the following:

For the job hunters,

• Establish a presence on websites where recruiters or potential employers are likely to visit
• Establish profiles on social network sites, such as LinkedIn, Ryze, Facebook, Twitter, Coworkers.com, alumni networks, and other professional associations, to build new contacts and meet people for sharing knowledge and experience.
• Keep separate profiles for personal and professional use, but maintain consistency in the way you present yourself across different sites
• Showcase your skills, experience, interest; Emphasize your strengths that attract potential employers
• Maintain a track record to allow recruiters to solicit feedback on you from co-workers, both past and present (i.e. joining Coworkers.com)
• Raise your value and broaden your visibility by engaging in regular "tweets", maintain a 75%-25% professional-to-personal tweet ratio, and identify yourself in a professional way
• Set up a blog that represents you; use it for both information capturing as well as telling others about who you are and what you do regularly

For the recruiters,

• Use social media tools to complement traditional recruiting methods and generate a large number of results
• Identify potential candidates online and explore "passive hires", communicate and evaluating these candidates online
• Extend company's networks to become a part of a larger network (a "talent pool") by leveraging its relationships with employees and other businesses
• Set up online job boards to advertise jobs and provide accurate job description
• Employ different social network tools for different types of job openings (ie. use Craiglist for senior positions and Creativecircle for entry to mid-level positions)
• Make company attractive to candidates rather than simply specify the job requirements
  
• Establish a company blog to encourage communication, spot top talents, and project a desirable image to outsiders

Social networking embraces the concepts of "six degree of separation" - two random people can be connected to each other through six other people (Menon). Social network sites weave the weak ties among people into a powerful web of talents and skills by allowing people to tab into other people outside their direct association. It is this powerful web that everyone dabs into for resources. A common complaint from HR professionals is that the large volume of resumes received makes it difficult to identify the qualified candidates. On the other hand, a common complaint from the job seekers is that the recruiters do not always get back to them regarding feedback or decision.

I find social networking beneficial to recruiting because the online process is far more efficient, less costly, and definitely eco-friendly. In addition, both the recruiters and the job applicants get to check one another out, and become better acquainted prior to engaging in further time and cost commitment.

Sources:
Chalian, Henry. "Working with Financial Recruiters." WSJ Blogs - WSJ. 4 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2010.

"How to Not Hire Someone Via Craigslist." How to Change the World. 27 Aug. 2007. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.

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Menon, Nikhil. "6 Degrees of Recruitment." The Economic Times: Business News, Personal Finance, Financial News, India Stock Market Investing, Economy News, SENSEX, NIFTY, NSE, BSE Live, IPO News. 27 Mar. 2007. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.

Miller, Lee E. "Social Networking Has Its Perks." New Jersey Local News, Breaking News, Sports & Weather - NJ.com. 21 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.

Porter, Joshua. "The Blog Is the New Resume." Bokardo Social Design by Joshua Porter. 19 Apr. 2007. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.

Schweyer, Allan. "The Power of Weak Ties (in Recruiting)." Small Business and Small Business Information for the Entrepreneur. 1 Aug. 2005. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.