As a part of an event I have coming up, the organisers asked me to do a litte future speculation on the direction the cultural and technological aspects of social networking are taking. Here’s what I put together for them.
Since late 2008, Australia and NZ have seen a significant spike in awareness in the general public and business of social networks. A lot of those people are only now getting their heads around the potential value these tools can offer to their lives and organisations.
Growth of social network use, especially networks like Twitter, will see an explosion of users (we’re already seeing it), and an explosion of usefulness when people and particularly governments and politicians realise it can be used as a near-instant clearinghouse and coordination point for things like policy formation, service delivery and canvassing of opinions. It’s perhaps even possible we’ll see it being used for things like coordination of disaster management information.
Of course, we’ll continue to see the shouty marketers and the get rich quick types proliferate, but they’ll get filtered out by the community of users as they prove to add no value to the conversation. On Twitter, as with any social network in the physical or online world, it’s about the value of the network, not the number of people you’re connected to.
In a world where we’re busier all the time and our circles continue to expand well beyond local, the cultural shift apparent in society to a point where people want better connectedness (and I’m not just talking about online) in a real, human way, means the importance of social networks will continue to grow. It’s only a matter of time before their use becomes normal rather than something of a curiosity to large parts of the world.
As one of just 15 Australians (of 2000 attendees) at TED this year, I was able to witness first hand a group of people for whom this shift has already taken place. Wildly disparate – doctors, musicians, artist, scientists, philanthropists, journalists and more – this group of relatively early adopters are empowered and empowering thanks to the cultural and technological shift they’ve made. There’s nothing they believe can’t and won’t get done with enough willingness and they use the power of their connectedness to make amazing things happen.
