Trendsspotting posted their annual Social Media Trends Predictions earlier this week. Predicting trends is a dangerous business especially in Social Media. However, the slide deck does offer some very interesting insights from a variety of social media commentators. I have included some of the ones that I found interesting in this post.
Across many of the predictions, Trendsspotting identified the following trends that are “suggested” to influence Social Media in 2010: Mobile, Location, Transparency, Measurement, ROI, Privacy. Though, you could argue that these same trends were visible in 2009.
Pete Cashmore from Mashable predicts:
Fuelled by the ubiquity of GPS in modern smartphones – location sharing services
Geo location of our "social movements" – Twitter, Facebook, blog comment, videos that we post.
Augmented Ready – cool technology, but will it be useful?
Social gaming and virtual currencies – Will big players seize the mobile payment opportunity?
Expect personal privacy – or rather its continued erosion to be big in 2010
David Armano – Blogger Logic and Emotion predicts:
Social media begins to look less social… more "exclusive" – getting value, while filtering out the clutter.
Firms will look to scale and uncover cost savings by leveraging social media e.g. Best Buy’s Twelpforce
Firms will have a social media policy – social media to social business
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
Sharing no longer means email – content producers will use other means to distribute their content e.g. iPhone and Android apps.
Marta Kagan – Managing Director, US Espresso Brand Infiltration predicts:
Real-time reviews will scare the pants off many a brand & foster a new ‘radical-beta’ mindset.
Tracking & Alerting" become the new searching.
Business finally admits that social media ain’t some fad for kids and B-list movie stars.
Dan Zarrella – Social & Viral Marketing Scientist Hubspot predicts:
With augmented reality and mobile social media, the real world will be important again.
Micro targeting and personalization – business will begin to leverage the wealth of data we share about ourselves to deliver individualised messages.
2010 will certainly bring in new applications and services, though whether they will “push the envelope” of brand engagement will yet to be seen.
