Social Media Trends

Every netizen has his or her bit of experience with social media. Some two years back when people were increasingly emphasizing on real-time search and information distribution, the marketing agencies and brand builders pitched in to optimize the benefits of social space and then started a much calibrated social media monitoring which proved that social media is not just a fad, rather it's a social technology revolution to understand the marketplace and consumers in an effective way. Time has changed. The same cynics who argued that social media is all fun and and no business have now taken a u-turn and are diehard proponents of social media integration with every business.

Well, social media dynamics are as nimble as social changes in a consumer world. Finally, the physical and virtual world of people have converged. The people who are more active in social space have turned to social media technologies to manifold the results. It's not too far from today when every democratic debate could emerge from aggressive social media discussions. With every new trend in social media, the community influence on businesses will be paramount. And the winners are certainly the ones who stay relevant to the social media trends. Well, let's have a look at some of those trends.

1. Privacy is a word of the past
With younger generations taking on to a non-hypocritical stand on personal choices, social media will enable this trend in a much bigger way. Increasingly people will accept personal exposes on social media. Beyond sharing likes, dislikes, wishes, opinions, and personal information, people will be tempted to share their most secret episode of their life. What it eventually would produce complex personal information that would help businesses personalize their products and services. For example, a survey on the length of a condom, which of course has a direct relationship with manhood, is still considered hush-hush in our society; however through social media the personal revelations would pour in, which in turn would help condom manufacturing companies to innovate better and more effective products.

2. Information portability
It will be a thing of past to view just Facebook trends on Facebook. What's more interesting would be to experience a composite trends across all social media. An OpenID would act as a passport to import all relevant information from various social media spaces and throw up to the expectations of viewers.

3. Real-time search
Gone are the days when we depended heavily on webcrawller logic to get stale search results indexed few days before. Today, Google's social search capability provides real-time information. With advance algorithms, Google can enable users to avail relevant yet timely information to enhance search experience.

4. Content aggregation
Content is king and still this statement is relevant today. Will upsurging social networks and exponentially increasing online profiles, the amount of online content is being generated at huge speed. Like content syndicates, the content aggregation will see a paradigm shift. And the most important fact is that how the content will be aggregated and how will it be presented to the end users will make or break the business.

5. Virtual reality
With platforms marrying each other at a breakneck speed, the end users will experience a more powerful applicability of social networking sites. Thanks to innovative technologies like 3-G, GPS mapping, mobile integration, all these will bring in an altogether new dimension not only to social relations but also to business relationships in long run. And the sad part is that your privacy is gone and you are exposed to million scrutiny.

6. Market influencer
TRP and ABC reports are a thing of the past. When advertising agencies claimed the number of eye balls directly influence the spend pattern of consumers, the social media has gone further to prove that viewership per se has really anything to do with sales, it's now the niche segmentation of viewership that really makes a significant differentiator. In fact, if we go by the market influential tactics, the feasibility of a sale only happens when the right customer receives the information. Advertising through TV or newspapers maybe as relevant today as was in past, but what really matters is that how the consumers internalize the facts propagated through advertising. The social media in turn has bring in breakthrough techniques to influence consumers in a larger way. The peer reviews, Google analytics, social trends, and various monitoring mechanisms have developed a sense of trust in consumers' mind.

7. Consumers' verdict
What's relevant today is how your peers perceive it. That has been a trend written on rock. Consumers now before buying any product take a deliberate preview of the product and its user ratings. If a product doesn't ferry well in user ratings, it's perceived that either the product is not worth purchasing or it's a sub-standard product. Imagine the verdict of consumers which will drive the business of tomorrow.

8. Social media as a service
So. what's next after SaaS, PaaS, and CaaS? Certainly, it's SmaaS or social media as a service that will define how SMEs which can't afford to full-range SM services of their own bank upon this new trend. Beyond fad, SmaaS will bring in new opportunity for businesses to expand their reach and brand positioning. And the SmaaS providers will see a complete new business opportunity along the evolution of social media technologies.

9. Crystal gazing
Everyone likes a bit of predictable future. What's relevant today might be hugely irrelevant tomorrow. Be it social trends, spending patterns, consumer behaviors, or marketing shenanigans, the future of social media largely depends on every aspect of consumer acceptance to change. Behind this lies innovative technologies to understand the implications of consumer reactions and bring about necessary logical changes in the usability of social technologies. That said, the gamut of social media will notice an array of visible changes on consumer usability and technology facilitation. Thus, the future will evolve from how consumers look at social media today and what they expect from the providers.

10. A marriage of social convenience
Social media and digital media will soon converge to open a newer platform for consumers. Digital divide will be dissolved sooner than latter. The elite technologies that specific sections of our society normally use will be available to all and sundry. Because social media will help reduce the class structure and evolve a paradigm shift in digital experiences that once was exclusive to top echelons of society. Thanks to the evolution of social media technologies that have brought people from all ranks and files to the same platform on a reasonably similar involvement.