I am sure you must have read my first five predictions on the socio-economic changes that the world will see with use of social media. The next set of five predictions that I have written are relevant in the realm of social media medium per se.
- First time use of social media through Mobile:
Majority of people world over will surf the Internet and social media for the first time in their lives using mobile phones. Mobile phone penetration is increasing rapidly in most countries and along with the its value added features like streaming. In India, close to 10 million subscribers are being added every month. These small towns will skip landlines and opt for cell phones directly. These towns will take technology leap in a manner of speaking. Simultaneously, several companies are in the process of launching social networking sites for mobile. Put these two together and you could see this prediction come true.
I predict that in 2009 itself, several small towns and rural areas will experience Internet & social media for the first time through cell phones and not through computers.
2. Online reputation management:
As our conversations move online, it will be imperative for brands and corporate to participate in them. Not only that, they will have to track those conversations to understand how their brands stand with the consumers. Are their brands in the consideration set or if they are they being spoken about in positive tone? These are very important questions for companies to get answers to as their marketing spends will be determined accordingly. There will be specialized agencies that will provide these services to the companies.
I predict that in 2009 online reputation management will be big business and most corporates will turn to it in a big way.
3. Facebook will become a paid site:
So will any social networking site that wishes to survive the next year. There have been enough and more articles written on SNS not being able to monetize on the huge subscribers that they have got for themselves. Venture capital funds can’t sustain them forever. Also purely by advertisements alone, they will not be able to break even or advance on their business plans.
I predict that in 2009, Facebook will turn a paid site. Facebook can charge $10 (Rs. 500) from every user for a year-long membership. Even if out of the 150 million users that Facebook boasts of, 2/3rd drop out, we talking of $500 mn (50m users X $10 per user) of revenue that it can generate in one year.
4. Twitter will become a verb i.e ‘To Tweet’:
Unofficially it already has. But in 2009, the importance of Twitter will grow so dramatically, that Oxford will be forced to accept it as part of our normal parlance. The role that micro blogging has played was fairly evident from the recent Mumbai terror attacks.
I predict that in 2009 twitter will become so important that at least one Indian company will use it to tweet important announcements being made in their Annual General Meeting (AGM)
5. Online videos will be most important marketing tool:
In the social media sphere, online videos will gain prominence over other marketing ploys. I had written in my earlier post that online videos will gain popularity even more in times of economic slowdown. In fact some brands like Kaya have already started using it. Other companies will soon follow and attempt to reach out to their potential consumers and collaborate with them to produce user generated content.
I predict that in 2009, social media agencies and production houses like Common Craft will have to specialize in providing online video solutions for corporates.
My friend, Gaurav Mishra who genteelly pushed me into writing these predictions has his written his seven predictions on social media. Peter Kim has compiled his predictions along with 13 other social media gurus that really makes a good reading.
I hope my predictions have given you some food for thought to start off your own set of predictions for the next year. Do mention them and comment on this post.
Comments
Tags: 2009, cell phone, Facebook, Kaya, mobile phones, Online Reputation Management, Online Videos, Predictions, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter
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@Nimesh I’ll be duly looking at your predictions next year since all of it signifies a shift from traditonal to more new age marketing.
BTW my favorite picks would be Facebook & Twitter predictions.
Kudos
—
Sampad
Sampad,
Yeah, I guess I have stuck my neck out on those ones!!! 🙂
I am not a fan of the paying for FB theory. That is what got Classmates.com into trouble all those years ago. You can find someone for free, why pay for a network with people that you barely know these days. FB is the best place for that.
Good ideas though and I agree with most of them.
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for commenting. I think Facebook will go paid purely for its survival reasons. They can’t sustain so many users doing so much on their site w/o finding out a way to monetize it.
Maybe they will allow everyone to make a profile but charge if you want to upload. For eg, if you want to upload more than 10 pics of yours or 5 videos or use any applications, you will have to be their paid member. So basic facilities can be free but anything is paid for which is pretty much standard way of monetizing done by most sites.
Nimesh
[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onSocial Media Reinventing itself in 2009 « Windchimes – a social …Here’s a quick excerpt@Nimesh I’ll be duly looking at your predictions next year since all of it signifies a shift from traditonal to more new age marketing. BTW my favorite picks would be Facebook & Twitter predictions. … […]
Hmm, I don’t think FB will charge subs in 2009, it’s too risky for them. They will simply work harder on making the current advertising model pay!
@Stuart The basis for mentioning that prediction is that FB is slowly becoming indispensible part of our lives. When a brand reaches that stage, it can afford to start taking liberties or charge its users.
Also another reason is economic slowdown will not allow venture caps to keep pouring in money on FB – it will have to become self sustaining
I also doubt that facebook.com will become a subscription service, unless a new level of ‘premium’ services are added. The success of the basic service is still the core, college-aged base group who will NOT pay…they will go elsewhere.
If you have ever seen FB’s advertising features and looked into the details, you will discover a relatively untapped option to target ads to very specific market segments. If anything, this option will be promoted/exploited to increase revenues. We have found FB ads to be hugely successful with an unheard of ROI.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for commenting.
Advertising if carried out beyond a point will kill social media itself. the reason you are enjoying advantages of FB adtvg currently, if bcos it is not completely leveraged.
Users will move away if they get hit by too much advtg. The idea of social media is to create conversations and itself will reduce if the ads start interfering in them
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Nimesh
Some good thoughts there.
I think thought leadership through social media will become an alternative and also mainstream in some cases. Specially in categories where behavior change is being attempted by the marketer to grow the market. There is always a debate on if the market is mature enough to put moolah in ATL activities. Social Media will become the experiment ground to make these choices more and more.
I do not agree with your view on the news channels bit. I think that increases viewer participation. While social media can be used to watch citizen reporting, the key ingredient missing there is authenticity. I see news channels using social media to develop specific localized content and more of that will happen.
The question is , are they going to have the same brands on this new media or develop a new news channel only for this space. I think the one which does the latter stands to gain more
Thanks KG for your comment.
Thought leadership will give edge to the companies that they have long wanted. They will have to be at it for a while to see those gains.
I like the idea of having citizen based journalism as a separate segment or channel in itself. Maybe its worth a try
Nimesh
You make a good point about mobile content. You might want to take a look at a white paper I wrote entitled “The reality of convergence: mobile mobile content” for First Tuesday Zurich, sponsored by Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
http://www.firsttuesdayzurich.com/the_body.cfm
Thanks Paul for your comment. Will surely download it for reference
Again, another great 5!
#4 – A bench mark will be how Hashtags will be adopted by the general population. I can see a group of individuals agreeing to create a topic thread and assign a hashtag to allow all to easily follow the thread. For example, “Rueb Family Reunion in 2009” would be created as #ruebfr09 and all the family members that tweet on this would include the hashtag so that all the others would see their thoughts! Then they can use tools to capture these thread (ie. tweetdeck, tweet search) and catch up on the discussion quickly, maybe even have it emailed to their phones, etc.
#5 – mobile technology will be the explosion of video. Better networks, better phones, better cameras, better microphones, better …
Good Hunting,
Good use of hashtags there. I see a distinct possibility of that happening as use of twitter is growing tremendously
Thanks Tim for your comments
[…] Social Media Reinventing itself in 2009 […]
Hi,
I was directed to your blog frm some place. Glad landed here to read your thoughts and predictions. Although most of them are what we all feel i guess one thing i will not agree with is social media becoming paid in the long run. The moment it is made paid it will become a commercial site and people may restrain from using it as a social medium of networking.
Thanks Suparna for commenting.
I guess Facebook prediction is the hot topic and as you would read the other comments, most of them feel that it will not become paid site.
Guess, we will have to watch out Dec 2009 🙂
Please forgive for coming back to this debate so late on. But I have just made ten predictions for how social media will evolve over the next year or so. I would value your feedback and that of your readers:
http://paulseaman.eu/2009/01/10-points-social-media-reality-check/
As brand conversations move online and becomes a free for all, social media can generate a lot of noise. How and who is to make sense of these and decide what is info and what is noise?
@paul – I agree that the most important social networks will be the mum,dad and close friends. But not all questions can get answered by them. So we will continue to build different layers of social networks. How we will merge them or keep them separate when required is a different issue 🙂 !!
We are all social animals :). If one tool/mechanism of establishing network fails or becomes inaccessible or becomes a pain in the neck , we naturally move to convenient ones.
@ssy-Thump.in – You are right. Society is all about the development of networks. Roads, sea routes, airports, telephones, faxes, radio, electricity grids, nations, cities, economies, and forums of West Ham United supporters. Networks are about social connections – there’s a person at the end of all of them.
I saw in Nigeria the transformative potential of the mobile internet, GSM and 3G. But “social media” is over hyped. That’s not to say new media (a better term) is not important. All media are social – on and off line. Man progressed by becoming social from the cave to today by constructing and expanding networks, all of which have a social benefit. Long may it continue.
Hi Paul,
I too agree with you when you say that social media is being over hyped. In fact i am worried when that’s happening. It’s a nascent field and can be killed if not explained correctly or expectations not set right.
Everything needs to be spoken or recommended in the right dose always helps!!
Hi,
#1, 2 and 5 are nothing new. They’re just going to grow as new users adopt this technology.
#4 – We all know Twitter is becoming more important in the media.
#3 – I’m no expert, but $10/head on a social network is a fixed revenue. Even though $10/head for 100 million, that’s 1 billion/year.
They can only grow revenue by signing up more paid subscribers.
Would an ad model not offer more long-term growth potential, like Yahoo! and Google have enjoyed? The more their network grows, the more they can charge for ad revenue.
Facebook seems to be going towards an Ad model with their targeted advertisements (users can rank whether ads were useful or relevant to them). Because of this, I actually LOOK at Facebook ads, even if it’s just to tell them to go away.
Hi Richard Weiss,
It’s good to read that you have found these predictions so apparent!!
What I have suggested for Facebook is another source of revenue. As a businessman, you will agree with me, one is always looking out for newer sources of revenuw. Also purely by advtg, it will be very difficult for FB to earn profits!!
Nimesh
Some good points. We’re definitely going to see some changes. I’m not 100% convinced that companies are going to learn how to communicate in this format within a year but will be interesting to see.
Hi Kevin,
It’s going to be a slow process but a positive one nevertheless. It surely would be interesting to see how companies lap up the opportunity
Nimesh