My ideal scenario (and I hope I'm not repeating myself here repeating myself here) is that social networks as we know them simply die out, and people just distribute the information directly, in a peer-to-peer fashion. You won't have to worry about whether to post information on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or any of the other social networks; you just post it to the Internet, and people who are interested in seeing it will read it.
This is how things worked after the invention of online journals and blogs, and before the invention of social networks.
This ideal scenario seems impossible now, but the current state of the industry hasn't existed very long. 6-7 years ago, social networks were still an emerging phenomenon. In another five years, the Internet might have moved on to something else.
I can imagine people tiring of social media, but I think that means moving onto something new and as yet unknown. Going back, for better or worse, seems unlikely.
"Yet" in social-network-years isn't very long, though. I also wonder whether we'll see "Gen Z" or whatever is next so jaded with social media they'll go back to reading and listening to classical music! We can dream, I guess.
It hasn't gone away yet, has it? I still use Tweetdeck, and there seem to be plenty of clients which will service a range of social platforms. Depressed to think this is the future, though.
There's also the chance that an entirely new network will spring up, I think. All the existing networks face the "Facebook problem" which is that the have to make money and thus will alienate their users!
I think it's more likely that we'll see about three major social networks, separated by demographic. Individuals will likely use only one, and base that choice on where their friends, and family are. Some will choose Facebook, others Twitter, others Tumblr.
Also, we'll see special-purpose social networks continue, places like LinkedIn devoted specifically to business relationships, as well as communities for hobbies like sewing, and business specialties, like lawyers.
A more optimistic outlook -- which could happen -- is that openness will win. It won on the Internet and Web, after all. In that case, you would be able to post to one social network and everything would be aggregated together from other networks.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
YouTube's move to a partial pay-for-view model could help relieve a dearth of good new content but it could also complicate debates in many parts of the world over payment by content providers for delivery of their material to customers.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
A growing number of HR managers are suspicious of individuals who do not take part in social media and view them as anti-social in real life as well as online.
Marissa Mayer at Yahoo has come out with her strategy on turning the company around: culture, company, calibration, and compensation. But Yahoo needs to have a technical approach to the mobile cloud opportunity, not a management theory lesson.
Twitter's changes are clearly aimed at being more Facebook-like, and this is because both companies are vying to serve the mobile social network market. But can that market work for anybody, given how difficult it is to push ads to social-update readers?
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