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… ..Continue reading..
