The rise and rise of social media

The jury is out on exactly which emerging technologies will ultimately have the most impact on the evolution of social media.

One such area is the development of open social standards, especially around the sharing of identity, relationships and activities. This will allow social activities to move easily between sites ­ – but with the proper permissions in place so that people can be in control of their personal data.

We are just in the nascent stages of this, but think how rich online experiences could be if we could extend our relationships outside social networking sites into areas such as news, shopping, travel, financial services and more.

There is also the opportunity for location-based services such as Loopt, Doppler or Yelp to connect us socially in the physical world. At TechCrunch 50, a new service called CitySourced allows people to submit requests –­ such as a missing sign, a pothole that needs to be repaired, or graffiti that needs to be removed –­ to city authorities by taking a photo, appending location information, and submitting it via a mobile device. Once received, the city can forward the request and let the requester know when the work has been completed.

Social media will benefit from new monetisation models, such as using social data to better target advertising. Companies such as Media6 Degrees, Lotame and 33Across provide ways to map social relationships so that companies can target friends of friends.

For example, if a person buys a Prius, it is likely that their friends would also be pre-disposed to buy a Prius. Toyota could target those people with adverts tailored to that pre-disposition.

Marketing and advertising models will evolve to address the new relationships formed by social media. The old interruptive advertising models and rules no longer apply.

There will be a place for traditional channels because they are still compelling. Video, audio and print all have a role to play alongside interactive channels, because there are stories that can be best told in each of these media.

But social media is particularly good at bridging the gap between product awareness ­ – provided by broadcast and print ­ – and intent and purchasing channels such as search, e-commerce and the physical store.

That said, the fear is that some traditional channels’ business models simply don’t support their cost structure any more. Newspapers and general interest magazines are the most vulnerable category here. Despite significant investment in online channels, the new revenue streams have not offset the migration of offline revenue, especially classified advertising in newspapers.

Given the importance of journalism in our society, the hope is that these traditional outlets develop public- or citizen-based business models, similar to public support television or radio such as the BBC or NPR.

Furthermore, the rise of a new source of journalists ­ – those who are publicly funded or independently financed ­ – will require that we rethink what it means to be a journalist and which outlets we consider to be “news”.

For example, blogs, which were once considered to be amateur, have become genuine news sources that people rely on for an alternative view to mainstream, professional journalism. Who pays for a news item to be published is as valid a question now as asking who wrote it or its original source.

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell ­ – Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, will give her keynote presentation on day three of the Online Information Conference 2009, on 1-3 December. See www.online-information.co.uk/conference for details