7 Predictions for Social Networks

Star gazing with a Social Nostradamus

I was thinking this week about Social Networks and how I saw their potential development over the next few years. As wonderful as they are, we must remember that sites such as Facebook are only really 5 years old, and they have had to spend time defining a business model, growing awareness and user bases and of course dealing with horrible scalability issues (when a site has 200 million users the industrialisation and volumetric management becomes a ‘tad tricky’).

So let’s assume the last 5 years have been all about understanding the market, users and fundamental sizing problems. What will (or should) the next 5 years deliver?

I see this question in the context of some interesting statistics:

1. The amount of time people are spending on Social Networks has trebled

2. Revenue from online advertising now outstrips offline

3. The rise of the smartphone, advances in mobile networks, and importantly price reduction in handsets and mobile Internet usage opens up some really exciting new potential

So let’s get to some predictions…

Prediction One – “The Ubiquitous Portal”

Remember the Yahoo! Portal of the mid to late 1990’s? It was pretty horrible for a number of reasons:

1. Too much content on a single page (and very distracting layouts)

2. Dreadful load speed over dial up connections

3. Difficult to personalise

4. Completely untargeted advertising (i.e. nothing was personal)

The reaction to that was the ‘lean and mean’ interface of Google. The battle between search engines and those that attempted to wrap search into a commercialised portal was an easy victory. Google dominated due to a) good presentation b) good search results.

With developments in User Interface technologies (which has permeated Web 2.0’s look and feel) we can provide many more personalisation options. Broadband uptake is widespread, so the world-wide-wait is significantly improved. As I mentioned, the amount of time people spend on Social Networks is rocketing and I see the Facebook’s of this world becoming the de facto landing page and personalised portal from where we consume the Internet and interact with our friends and contacts. The huge rise in Social Media and related innovation of course led to great fragmentation (hundreds if not thousands of Social Media sites and companies ‘sprung up’), so we need ‘different thinking’ to make this a reality. Applications that plug-in to the Social Network are already popular and these provide an initial solution along with aggregators and services like Google Friend Connect, Facebook Friend Connect etc. Some sites will need to ‘let go’ of their independence and realise that their future lies as a component within the Social Network rather than a stand-alone service. This will be disruptive to some as it will involve a radical change in their business models.

But in all seriousness if I have my Social Network, search engine, email, entertainment and other communication services in one central portal then why would I ‘go’ anywhere else? The Social Networking platform could therefore evolve into my ‘Internet Command Console’, or as I term it “The Ubiquitous Portal”.

The issue of course with ‘single point’ is that it leads to ‘single point of failure’. At what point does the Social Network you build become so central to your business or life that to lose it (through a site closure or terms of use infringement) means ‘catastrophe’? I wonder if we will reach a view that the Social Network becomes so critical to the lives of ‘citizens’ that we need a National Networking Service. That again could be abused, but it would be a fascinating discussion!

Prediction Two – “Mashing up with Virtual Worlds”

I quite like Second Life, but honestly I’ve never really got into it beyond “well that’s pretty interesting”. Time is limited, and having the Virtual World applications separate is in my mind a mistake. I predict a rise of usage of this technology within mainstream Social Networks. If you think about it, Social Networks (in terms of presentation and networking methods are really quite dull). I sign up, describe myself in some text boxes, join a bunch of groups, invite people to connect. That’s great as far as it goes, but in 5 years it will be a ‘big yawn’. I want to see attempts to build more innovative User Interfaces, I want to be able to traverse virtual worlds within sites like Facebook where I can visualise the network and links within the Social Graph clearly. This does not exist today, and to be honest the type of networking we do on today’s Social Networks is very unsophisticated compared to what we do in real life social situations. I want to get people thinking about how this might be made real.

Speed networking inside a virtual world in Facebook anyone?

Prediction Three – “The ‘Social Boost”

Not sure if this is a prediction, a wish or an idea for a business! Here’s what I want to be able to do in Social Networks

1. Describe myself in a mind map (or a similar drawing)

2. Translate the mind map into a meta model (this will describe what’s centrally important to me, localise that importance (e.g. capture that I am interested in technology start-ups and want to make new connections in the South East of England / London)

3. I want to be able to describe networking goals in the Social Network to augment the ‘meta model’

So, now I’ve described myself in a much more sophisticated way than just boring old words, I express some networking goals, others have done similar. I now “deploy” these definitions into the network itself. Where matches are found for those with similar interests, locations etc., the network will ‘build itself’. So the Social Boost is a concept of a self-generating (personal) Social Network. I deploy myself into the network, the network builds around me – not the other way!

I would pay for a service that found influencers in certain markets / locations profiled their goals against mine and built a network around those willing to participate. Friend suggestions in current Social Networks are useful, but could be infinitely more useful. If you build a network proactively for business but switch market focus, you could easily and quickly realign. Move from London to Manchester and rebuild your network in seconds. Now this only augments real life, it doesn’t replace it, but it could be a genuine Social Boost for nomadic and entrepreneurial souls.

I’m sure this suggestion has many challenging sociological implications!

We’re currently awash with talk of collaboration and Google Wave, and I predict greater use of collaboration tools inside the Social Network. Again this comes back to my view that the Social Networking platforms have the potential to mature into true Web Portals.

Prediction Four – “Marketing & Increased Acceptance of Profiling”

I once described the Internet as the ‘last bastion of escapism’, but I think the Social Networking phenomenon is changing how we view our Web interaction. It is no longer (and indeed hasn’t been for some time) a passive interaction. Opinions and ideas flow freely and increasingly people embrace an online persona with attributable commentary.

As much more of this interaction is centralised, again reinforcing the point that the Social Network is morphing into the ultimate Web Portal, it provides a very rich seam of information which can be used for profiling and delivery of targeted advertising.

I would definitely concede that some of this targeted advertising remains pretty dumb and annoying. For example, set your status to Single on Facebook and your advertising displays will be full of helpful links like “meet cute girls” (ironically that does seem to be a good suggestion!). I also wrote (about 18 months ago) in some length about online advertising models and my strong view is that advertising must become part of the overall entertainment experience. Make it interactive, targeted and non-interruptive and people will have greater acceptance. Better still, make it truly useful and people will soon ‘love’ it.

The Social Network is driving so much discussion, ideas, opinion, sentiment capture that I believe if the advertising models can be suitably constrained and tweaked, that people will accept (even support) online profiling and targeted advertising (within boundaries of course, and ideally under legislative control).

Prediction Five – “Location, Location, Location”

This prediction comes off the back of smartphone uptake and context aware services (which are currently really just based on location). The phone knows where you are, the applications and software on the phone delivers the Social Network to the mobile device, and with some decent visualisation tools we can visualise the network within the physical context of ‘where you are’ (as well as where others are).

I think this is an important vision, as there is a difference between online and offline networking, and I am somewhat frustrated that technology is not doing more to breakdown barriers and enrich both networking paradigms through cross-population. This might be a little tricky to grasp, so let’s take a simple example:

1. I go to an industry event with my Apple iPhone in hand

2. I walk and talk and exchange cards

3. I head for home or the office, and send out connection invites to folks that I met and found interesting

That’s really the ‘as is’ world. You can see the iPhone didn’t really lose much battery power.

In the ‘to be world’ let’s consider a better approach:

1. I go to an industry event with my Apple iPhone in hand

2. I can visualise based on applications on the device (and devices carried by others), my network and their networks.

3. I could see for example that someone at the event is a friend of a friend. I / they make an approach, we click some magic buttons (on the smartphone) and bingo we are instantly connected on the Social Network. Time, date, event, context could all be captured – e.g. we met at a security event, in 2009, we were introduced by ‘Bob’ or we had a common connection ‘Fred’.

The ‘to be’ world will begin to remove the disconnect between offline and online networking. Innovators – please take note! Visualisation of the network should collide with visualisation of context and the idea of cross-fertilising online and offline network building.

Prediction Six – “Worlds within worlds”

I’m currently writing two articles about onions: 1) “The Privacy Onion” 2) “The Trust Onion”. I may have a hidden fixation with the “literature of vegetables”, but this is a confession – not a prediction. The Social Network ‘as is’ is a big ‘walled garden’. Mostly (networking libertines aside) people set privacy so only friends can see their activities / posts / pictures and friend links. But start thinking about what you consider to be a friend in a Social Network, then think about how you consider privacy and trust and you have a big headache. Trust and privacy take on interesting connotations in work and private life. You may trust someone implicitly in the office, but don’t want to entrust them with private information in a personal Social Network. The Internet of today (the mobile phone catalysed the problem) presents challenges in terms of understanding where work ends and private life begins. People get sacked for things they say on Facebook, recruiters check up on online profiles of potential candidates. This is a reality.

So we see that trust and privacy are really multi-dimensional and situation dependent concepts. There are also gradations of trust. For example I might trust someone based on their profession (doctor, airline pilot), but there is a limitation in the trust. I might trust someone with another career background differently, or the trust may be quite neutral.

Trying to manage a network of contacts in a Social Network is therefore difficult, or really not flexible enough to mimic modern real-world requirements. Facebook added friends lists so that different controls could be applied to groups of people. Good start! But try and visualise who can and cannot see different content and you soon realise this is is very far from being a useful and sophisticated solution.

I predict a huge leap in Social Network visualisation and control tools. What I really want is a three dimensional model of the network, with visual overlays for controlling privacy and trust relationships, really by ‘dragging’ people in and out of of different areas on the visualised model. The “Onion Model” that I will describe in a forthcoming post shows the layers of trust and privacy really as ‘rings within rings’. I see the use of control tools that allow me to drag and drop / move different people into different zones of that model easily and with clearly understood results (i.e. only folks in this layer can see this content).

Where this will lead will be the possibility to create and control Social Networks within your own Social Network, and to be satisfied that information doesn’t leak between them (I mean of course from a technological basis).

As the technologies mature, the best advice is of course “keep truly private information off the Internet”. It’s really fascinating though to ponder how people view privacy and what information they classify as private. Others might consider the same information to be ‘not private’ in the context of how they ‘understand the world’.

My main point on this prediction is that the sophistication and controls inside Social Networks today do not (at least in an easily useable form) support the nuances of trust and privacy which differs across people and cultures. Worlds within worlds combined with virtual world technology within the Social Network would be really exciting and interesting.

I think this is an idea for another start-up company!

Prediction Seven – “Application Mashups”

Applications for Social Networks are written and maintained by geeks. Clever geeks, but still geeks. Geeks are useful, but applications which might be popular in a niche might disappear or become unsupported (this is an issue for both smartphone applications and the applications we add to enrich / augment sites like Facebook). The worst possible joke I could make at this point is “beware geeks baring gifts”, but they are a flighty bunch driven by fast moving trends.

What I want / predict here is two-fold:

1. Application Development Kits for non-geeks [a genuine “do it yourself” model for non-techie users]

2. An Application Mashup Kit.

Let me expand on point 2. Applications are built from components parts. Useful, reusable units of ‘stuff’. I foresee libraries of these components which can be assembled (possibly using the tools I mention in point 1) to build completely personalised applications. We’re currently consuming application content (on smartphones and Social Networks) written by others and therefore defined by others. This is “old thinking”. Personalisation is king, but the control and freedom of application development and application assembly seems a bit ‘stuck’.

It wouldn’t hurt to get lots of these applications into the Open Source Community, so they can (at least) be maintained, understood and developed for the common good.

Comments / Other Predictions?

I’d love to hear comments, and other predictions. I doubt if I am the only “Nostradamus of Social Theory”, so please do share your opinions / thoughts / insight – or even Social Networking wishes…

Also feel free to drop me a note on any of the Social Sites listed above. Happy to meet, and happy to connect…

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