The future of social media

I am no futurist. The future often surprises me when it becomes the present. But I've been thinking lately, about the future of social media. Where is it all going? What does the world look like when social media becomes a commonplace, everyday activity for 100s of millions of people in the world?

I think the master trend is that social media technology will be continuously refined so that people will be able to behave and interact online as they do in everyday life. This is a long-term trend that started years ago, perhaps with the telegraph or maybe with the jungle drum. It speeds up and slows down but it keeps relentlessly moving forward.

Over the years, I've heard lots of predictions, some seemed logical at the time, others made you wonder whether the prediction was visionary or hallucinatory. But here are a few that keep coming up. Most have been around for years and in no case do I know whose vision came first. It probably doesn't matter. Vision only needs credit when it becomes reality.

Anyway here are some of the ideas I've heard that may come true--that I hope will come true:

1. Virtual reality in teaching. Some day students will take a VR tour of the wildlife lands of Africa, or the melting ice caps. They will understand what it really was like to have fought with mace and ax at at Battle of Hastings. This may happen in the classroom or the comfort of their homes--or both.
2. Computers will emerge out of the boxes. When we socialize online, we will no longer be confined to the types of devices we use today. Instead, when I talk with you, I will be watching a realtime avatar of you on my desktop or in my living room. If you are Chinese, I will speak in English and you will hear it in Chinese and the reverse.
3. Global Neighborhoods will be marketplaces. As in the tangible world, each of us will be familiar with multiple neighborhoods. But social media technology will have minimized the relevance of geographic barriers. In so doing, people will bypass government, language, currency and other barriers to deal with each other, trade, collaborate or inform each other.

Either that, or sometime in a few decades, some web surfer will come across this very post and shrug and smile about how off base I had been.

Comments

[Andy Finkle]

Great comments, I would add the following for MY future vision (for web in general, not only social media...The web needs to be more "world wide" I do not personally know anyone in the US that interacts with any foreign based sites (unless they are searching or researching a specific geography)...seems so "US" based from my perspective

The web needs to have protocols like what SMTP did for email (allowed disparate email systems to all interconnect seamlessly)...NO MORE WALLED GARDENS

Lastly, I can not wait for the web to finish its convergence with broadcast TV/cable (still in its infancy)... I want to be able to do EVERYTHING on one screen even if that screen is viewed via my TV,CellPhone,Wii,Car,etc

[Ola Mattisson]

I belive, thanks to social media, extreme poverty (people living on less then 1 dollar / day) have ended before the end of 2025.

I believe the transpearancy of peoples life and needs (thanks to social media) will involve more people taking responsability, sharing there wealth, caring, and feel good by doing so.

I belive microcredit (one important form of charity) will increase because:

*People with money (PWM) will be "closer" to people without money (PWOM).

*PWM will better understand the need of PWOM and therefor we´ll see an increase in microcredits (PWM ledning money, helping, PWOM).

*A PWM will be thanked by the person recieving since, they are connected through social media.

*A giving person will be recognized among friends and other people for his / her participation in charity.

*KIVA "loans that changes lifes" is only one example (www.kiva.org)

[Mihaela Vorvoreanu]

#1 is already happening, but it's VERY expensive. In the VR cave at Purdue (see http://www.envision.purdue.edu/) you can walk inside a dinosaur skeleton, play around with molecules as if they were balloons, fly through cities of the past and future.

The main challenges of the future are cost and access. Not all universities are Purdue and not everybody gets to go there.

The sad reality is that while Purdue can invest millions in a VR cave, people are still dying of thirst on this planet. I love the previous comment about microcredit, but I believe it takes macro-level policy to really solve these problems.

[frank]

I love the idea of #3 ... it's exciting to think about the possibilities.

To some extent this is what the web has begun to do from day one. Slowly but surly the geographic barriers and language barriers have been chipped away.

---
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[Tom]

Baby steps. There are flaws in today's web. I imagine that even as progressed as things will be there will still be room for improvement.

There are ways, today, that the web can be used by the average person to not only create an income but, support their lifestyle, supply their household and have enough left over to help others.

One, in particular, I already use.

Keep looking for what will work for you.

The future is closer than we may realize.

Tom
http://TomFraley.com

[Ignacio Escribano]

Hi Shel, interesting post. I laughed when I read "...others made you wonder whether the prediction was visionary or hallucinatory".

I also hope that social media will contribute to solve many humanitarian problemns in a broad scale.

Best to everyone from Buenos Aires,
I.

[Nandy]

Wov, Nice comments about future of social media.

Read more about future of social media
http://ndot.in/blog/2009/02/03/future-of-social-media-networking-applications/

[Authority Networker]

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