Nicely done. A solid post revisiting Jeremiah's report -- we covered it at the time, and ran an adapted version in our social media issue in June. http://sn.im/0609tp
That issue was all about where we go from here in social media -- an effort reflected primarily in our collaborative stab at a Social Media Maturity Model (which appeared in print) and our #303030 Project, where that Model was dissected over 30 days by 30 different analysts, vendors, thought leaders, bloggers, etc.).
We haven't closed the loop on the #303030 Project just yet -- would love to either mirror this post or give you a chance to declaim from a different rooftop for a change. You can check out the Maturity Model here: http://sn.im/smmm09 And the #303030 Project begins here: http://sn.im/303030-0601
Would love to bat around ideas anytime -- the plan is to have an updated version in the Jun2010 issue. j. @kitson @CRM @destinationCRM
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Love this idea! Can we take this to DM or email? Thank you!
DanielPBingham
· 1 month ago
Great post Brian. I think that for many corporations, the biggest change will be felt when corporate participation in social media shifts from opt-in participation, where companies choose whether to make their sites social and to participate in social networks, to a situation where consumers are able to make a company’s site social at the browser level where the company has no control. This has started already but will become the general experience in the era of social context.
I call it asymmetric social media - similar to asymmetric warfare where insurgents use an opponent’s own infrastructure and institutions as a platform to launch attacks - social media technologies will allow users to use a company’s own web properties as a platform to have discussions, express opinions about the company and engage others.
I think Google Sidewiki is just the start, since it allows other (random) people to comment on any webpage. Once you are able to interact with your own circle of online relationships across any website the power and influence of this technology will grow exponentially.
I have found that many companies are able to ignore social media as long as it stays confined within the respective social networks, but when social communities set up camp on their own corporate websites there is going to be a rude awakening in many boardrooms.
There are different kinds of audiences. Active ones, as you've identified, who want to engage in discussions, but also more passive ones who just share the content that interests them.
Asymmetric or not, I think that the future of the social web is in understanding how this content diffuses through the various ecosystems that surround brands, and managing that to focus marketing efforts. I can use bit.ly to see some of how the content I share is proliferating, but there really aren't many tools for site owners and advertisers to track their content and whether key influencers are sharing it (and how). There is www.tweetiator.com for twitter but nothing out there for FaceBook et al.
DanielPBingham
· 1 month ago
I think the behavior of the passive audiences is more interesting, because there are so many more of them. When they don't have to go to Facebook or Twitter to see the dialogue and content sharing happening around a brand, but have this content pushed to them automatically on the company's own website through technologies like SideWiki - this is when the conversations and content become a whole lot more important to a lot of brands.
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Take a look at what Baynote is working on Daniel...would like your thoughts.
DanielPBingham
· 1 month ago
Brian, Baynote's technology looks very interesting - is this the technology Amazon.com uses? I know I have bought a number of products based on the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" suggestions.
I imagine their next step is to include information from the user's so-called social circle in the suggestions, like the way Google's Social Search adds to search results. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I think the big leap forward will be the shift from being informed that "strangers who may be like me" took this action to "my social circle" took this action. I would actually like to see both sets of information - where the masses and my social circle agree is where I am really going to pay attention as a consumer.
ggruber66
· 1 month ago
Daniel, I was listening to a podcast the other day and an author (maybe Bill Simmons hawking "The Book of Basketball") talking about Amazon and they 'let slip' that the "Customers Who Bought..." links are actually paid ad sponsorships, not a complex algorithm. A little disappointing and feels kind of slimy.
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Daniel, very interesting insights...lends very well to Searls' VRM movement...will read the whitepaper. Sounds good.
Mike Troiano
· 1 month ago
Great post, Brian. I've been a champion for the SRM cause for a while now, and continue to beleive it's where this all goes.
A few of us in Boston had a discussion about the future of the social web at Wednesday's MITX event, where I suggested it would be defined by three things:
1. The shift from destination-based to distributed social network availability, as stated in the Forrester work. 2. The increasing application of our social networks as a filter for the information onslaught around us, as we saw in the launch of Google's Social Search product this week, and... 3. As a result of the above - a dramatic shift from focus on the quantity of one's social network reach to a focus on the quality of one's social network connections.
After reflecting on this I unfollowed 10,000 people in Twitter last week, cutting my bot traffic by about 95%, and leaving a core group of people whom I "know," and who's opinions I genuinely value. While it's cost me about 20% of my own followers, I find myself getting a lot more out of Twitter as a result, and eager to apply the implicit or explicit preferences of that group to my online experiences.
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Mike, you are right on with your vision...as you see, I have some thoughts here that extend the idea of aggregation, syndication, filtering/intelligence and also portability. Very interesting times ahead...
Denis Paul Van Chestein
· 1 month ago
Wow. Great article. I'll have to get back to you about my vision of the Future of Social Media or Social Web but two things come to mind rapidly. First, I have a problem with mixing "semantic" and "collective intelligence" as the backbone of a system providing appropriate content for social interactions. Appropriate content within the context of a purchase experience, maybe certainly not a truly and fully satisfying social experience !!! I don't think collecting social data about "semantic" and "collective intelligence" will guarantee creativity; hence, where and how to ensure the renewal of the brand experience? I believe humans will still be needed to renew the brand experience and keep brands appealing.
Second, I have a major problem with a social OS that brings along all of my social data, mysocial graph and consumer behavior, etc.; I would be much more into a personal social OS that let me decide what data I want to push out to whatever social platform I am visiting!!!
Kaspar Minosiants
· 1 month ago
3. The era of social colonization - it'd be nice to be in a colony of people with the same interest but in the same time I think it would narrow my view and bring the filling that nothing else exist . The most interesting thing would be at the intersection of different colonies . I't be nice to have a button "Go to completely different colony" LOL
Thank you for interesting material !!!
Hans Leijström
· 1 month ago
Thanks Brian for a great post! I think the global community will need to solve the identity dilemma. To make this comment, I used one of my Twitter accounts. But, I could have used FB or Disqus as well. Hijacking of brands calls for verification, people die, we have still many voices without faces etc. Brian, please let me hear what you think will happen in the future?
Brandon101
· 1 month ago
Excellent post Brian. I can imagine the talks on identity portability are as complicated and challenging as the discussions on carbon emissions and climate change are with global nations. We're in a situation now where there are a few really big players that control most of the data, and to your point this is a major risk of widespread adoption of this concept. This discussion has been floating around for a few years now, but we're still not there. In fact, I'd argue that with Facebook Connect, we are actually moving further away from true identity portability. That is, unless Facebook joins forces with OpenID, or something along those lines. Any predictions on how this will happen?
Thanks for the post. It's very inspiring.
tomob
· 1 month ago
Hi Brian:
Nice post - I agree that SRM is a great place to point to for the corporate ==> person relationship - and is consistent with the VRM thinking.
Would be great to see a few large organizations start to implement. I guess that is what Altimeter and Dachis are about.
TO'B
goodwinners
· 1 month ago
Thank you for interesting material !!!
marcusnelson
· 1 month ago
Great post Brian - Reading these comments, I'd have to agree with Brandon Sutton in that Facebook is the 800 lb. Gorilla leading the way, but they are far from being a Switzerland of identity management. There needs to be an intermediary that manages this identity - OpenID is close (and getting better), but still far from being widely accepted as the platform of Identification management.
A true SRM should (would) be an agnostic profile service that the end-user controls. Let them manage and release data points to whomever & wherever they decide. That'd be the killer social app.
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Hey Marcus, indeed...that's a bit of VRM and SR. The power of identity and connections should reside with the user...on the other side, SRM is also a philosophy and tech platform for improving experiences and adapting to market evolution.
Barney Lerten
· 1 month ago
Deep thoughts for a 'simple reporter' to grasp, but ... it's why I'm using Seesmic, to try to see if my aging brain can adequately multi-task across several (work/home, Twitter/Facebook) accounts. Simpler the better, I agree. I've been wrestling for months with sign-in conflicts between our TV station's WorldNow Website and the third-party bolt-on JS-Kit comment system (can't seem to require authentication without shutting the door accidentally to most/all comments - and can't sign in from home even with JS-Kit's help.) Single sign-on, universal conversation API - that's the discussion I was having with others as Sidewiki launched, but it seems not to be getting a lot of buzz/traction (and some opposition.) Then there's the idea of WHOSE platform becomes universal. I've hit a variant of this problem with the fact that the Website I help run somehow blocks being logged in via Google Accounts (so I can't use Sidewiki there or at a few other sites), and it's not a Google problem because the Windows Live sign-in also is blocked - even when I'm logged in on other tabs. And it's not a PC problem because I see it across numerous PCs. In other words, some piece of code is blocking that log-in presumably. If someone likes one social Web/platform offering over others, or doesn't like them at all, could they block access like this? Does make me wonder if the global social Web system would have so many holes in it - intentionally or othewise - so as to make it hard to universalize (is that a word?;-)
Barney Lerten
· 1 month ago
Oh, and to give you an idea of the resistance I face, we now have a huge online community of commenters, mainly anonymous, at our Website. But they can only post comments on local stories - WorldNow scratched their head on why I'd want to let our visitors comment on national stories. Sigh.
It's like I'm in a WWI foxhole, and as the bullets fly and we gain muddy ground by inches, I see an ELO-colored spaceship flying overhead. I keep pointing... they keep shooting and slipping in the mud;-)
Steve Cantrell
· 1 month ago
Great post... lots to think about. If my 4 museums have vibrant, engaged FaceBook communities and rank high on Google, with this upcoming freedom of movement, do I even need to start a museum blog (covering all 4 museums) -?
Andrea Ong Pietkiewicz
· 1 month ago
@marcusnelson that killer app of which you speak would obviate, for instance, the fact that even to comment on a blog post, we're faced, first of all, with choices to make about how or whether we want to "control-panel" (for lack of a better analogy) our digital conversational trail: provide identification in each instance or login to Disqus or Twitter or FB....<name your soc net>.
I'm not up-to-speed on what OpenID is up to, but I agree that the future of the digital society has to include a single sign-in experience to enable individuals to move seamlessly from one space to another.
Beyond a seamless experience, however, I suspect that having visibility into our online activities will jolt many into being more aware of their digital footprints. Faced with a dashboard tracking our digital interactions, perhaps we may become more conscious of our digital broadcasts and be more protective of our privacy.
charlierobinson
· 1 month ago
excellent article and comments... thanks for the thoughts xc
The technical challenges of intelligently processing the (un)natural language which social interactions produce is huge. I say "un"natural as tweets, for example, do not adhere to regular conversation or language practises.
The coming together of mutiple IDs is something we've all been waiting for for a while and Facebook connect is largely beginning to succeed where the geeky easily misunderstood OpenID did not.
Once that happens the question of personalisation remains. "Crowd sourcing" (a dubious term at best) is not enough. Analysis of mass habits goes some way to provide a basic filtering of content (i.e. forms of collaborative filtering) but trust networks and reputation engines based upon taste and past behaviour are the future (although admittedly, I'm bias http://blog.rummble.com/whatisrummble/ ) as only they provide a real level of personalised filtering beyond the sentiment of the crowd.
jbernoff
· 1 month ago
Brian, since the report was published, I've frankly been disappointed in the slow progress towards a common ID.
What can we do to accelerate this? Because the Web is fragmenting due to separate identities, which frankly makes this future hard to get to.
Brian Anderson
· 1 month ago
I agree Josh and would be very interested in marketers comments on what they are doing to push the boundaries...
(the other) Brian
Bernie Ritchie
· 1 month ago
Very helpful intro to Forrester's Future of Social Web report courtesy of social web expert @briansolis
Rob Poitras
· 1 month ago
This gives a great overview of the future. But people shouldn't forget that now is the time to start caring about their customers and connect with them via the sites they are on currently.
hannah trinity, web designer
· 1 month ago
Great article you have, in-depth. I wasn't aware of this until now. Thanks.
richardstacy
· 1 month ago
I must confess I had always found that Forrester analysis a little complicated and insufficiently forward-looking. For me the shift that social media is bringing is from places (web sites, networks even) to spaces (conversations, twitter tags). This because the fundamental change at the heart of social media is the separation of information from a dedicated means of distribution. Information is free and can therefore do its own thing. Information will increasingly shape and create its own network, not the other way around, in the same way that a particular external stimulus lights up a particular pathway (network) in the brain. Understand the nature of digital space and how influence works within this (freeing yourself from a focus on digital places) and you will understand the future of social media.
The Forrester analysis is too rooted in the concept of digital place with insufficient attention to the dynamics of digital space.
i think about this a lot too. in the way that gravatar automatically puts your profile pic up around the social networks, and as you mentioned, OpenID, what if there was a service that automatically posted your links to all your social networks/platforms? for instance, it would be nice if when i found an interesting article, i could automatically send it to delicious, twitter, twine, facebook if relevant, groups in linkedin, etc. perhaps the app could be embedded in the toolbar in the browser, and when you click it to link an article, a box would pop up with all your networks, and you could simply check the boxes of the places you wanted to send the article. that would be so convenient...
... just one of a million ideas running thru my head
Urs E. Gattiker
· 1 month ago
Dear Brian
I love this post and it got me thinking and I begun reflecting. Let me share a bit with you and your many readers.
For us with MyComMetrics (http://My.ComMetrics.com) innovation is a stage-by-stage process (idea to prototype) where each stage of development is combined with regular measurements of factors we perceive as critical for achieving success, particularly regarding time used and money spent ... to the success in the market as reflected by new subscribers and their feedback about the product.
I am having a difficult time to see where social networks innovate here? Yes, of course they provide feedback or they signal thumbs up or down about what we did ..... they even provide suggestions for improvement and so forth. But they did not come up with the original idea, did they?
I still believe that crowdsourcing is a myth or misconception – crowds do not innovate, individuals do. In fact the wisdom of crowds can only be conventional. So social networks may help but I cannot see where they innovate. Maybe you can help me on this one?
Thanks for this nice post.
Urs @ComMetrics
PS. One of my esteemed friends has even suggested that crowdsourcing is: "... to me simply a stupid mashup of a word and it smacks of the lowest common denominator."
Christine, Addiction Recovery
· 1 month ago
An interesting post. Thanks for sharing.
Gabe Chesman
· 1 month ago
@Brian Do you think a time will come when consumers have the upper hand and manipulate their relationships?
briansolis
· 1 month ago
Gabe, we've seen examples of this consumer influence exerted. It certainly sets the stage for Doc Searls' idea of VRM...
Gabe Chesman
· 1 month ago
@Brian There's always collateral damage.
jessiedb
· 1 month ago
Great article!
I think it is interesting how technology has evolved through the years and how the social web is now the basis for many businesses and means of communication. It is also interesting to see how the social web is predicted to evolve in the future. I have been learning about CRM (customer relationship marketing) in my classes, and it is interesting how CRM has transformed to SRM for the world on the web.
JDeragon
· 3 weeks ago
Nice article Brian.
Personally I envision what Doc Searls new book titled "The Intention Economy". Instead of the web silos sucking markets to them we the people will be enabled to decide and pull which markets are relevant to our interest, our needs and wants. By this I mean the web will evolve and enable us to maintain our own "virtual homes" and when we seek something all we'll do is ask and it will come to use on our terms and our time.
The ultimate "social" process will be when we have even greater influence over markets and control which markets we participate in. Make sense?
All Comments
Nicely done.
A solid post revisiting Jeremiah's report -- we covered it at the time, and ran an adapted version in our social media issue in June. http://sn.im/0609tp
That issue was all about where we go from here in social media -- an effort reflected primarily in our collaborative stab at a Social Media Maturity Model (which appeared in print) and our #303030 Project, where that Model was dissected over 30 days by 30 different analysts, vendors, thought leaders, bloggers, etc.).
We haven't closed the loop on the #303030 Project just yet -- would love to either mirror this post or give you a chance to declaim from a different rooftop for a change.
You can check out the Maturity Model here: http://sn.im/smmm09
And the #303030 Project begins here: http://sn.im/303030-0601
Would love to bat around ideas anytime -- the plan is to have an updated version in the Jun2010 issue.
j.
@kitson
@CRM
@destinationCRM
I call it asymmetric social media - similar to asymmetric warfare where insurgents use an opponent’s own infrastructure and institutions as a platform to launch attacks - social media technologies will allow users to use a company’s own web properties as a platform to have discussions, express opinions about the company and engage others.
I think Google Sidewiki is just the start, since it allows other (random) people to comment on any webpage. Once you are able to interact with your own circle of online relationships across any website the power and influence of this technology will grow exponentially.
I have found that many companies are able to ignore social media as long as it stays confined within the respective social networks, but when social communities set up camp on their own corporate websites there is going to be a rude awakening in many boardrooms.
I wrote a white paper on this dynamic here: http://mhgroupcom.com/asymmetric-communications/
I would be interested to get your thoughts.
Asymmetric or not, I think that the future of the social web is in understanding how this content diffuses through the various ecosystems that surround brands, and managing that to focus marketing efforts. I can use bit.ly to see some of how the content I share is proliferating, but there really aren't many tools for site owners and advertisers to track their content and whether key influencers are sharing it (and how). There is www.tweetiator.com for twitter but nothing out there for FaceBook et al.
I imagine their next step is to include information from the user's so-called social circle in the suggestions, like the way Google's Social Search adds to search results. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I think the big leap forward will be the shift from being informed that "strangers who may be like me" took this action to "my social circle" took this action. I would actually like to see both sets of information - where the masses and my social circle agree is where I am really going to pay attention as a consumer.
A few of us in Boston had a discussion about the future of the social web at Wednesday's MITX event, where I suggested it would be defined by three things:
1. The shift from destination-based to distributed social network availability, as stated in the Forrester work.
2. The increasing application of our social networks as a filter for the information onslaught around us, as we saw in the launch of Google's Social Search product this week, and...
3. As a result of the above - a dramatic shift from focus on the quantity of one's social network reach to a focus on the quality of one's social network connections.
After reflecting on this I unfollowed 10,000 people in Twitter last week, cutting my bot traffic by about 95%, and leaving a core group of people whom I "know," and who's opinions I genuinely value. While it's cost me about 20% of my own followers, I find myself getting a lot more out of Twitter as a result, and eager to apply the implicit or explicit preferences of that group to my online experiences.
Second, I have a major problem with a social OS that brings along all of my social data, mysocial graph and consumer behavior, etc.; I would be much more into a personal social OS that let me decide what data I want to push out to whatever social platform I am visiting!!!
Thank you for interesting material !!!
Thanks for the post. It's very inspiring.
Nice post - I agree that SRM is a great place to point to for the corporate ==> person relationship - and is consistent with the VRM thinking.
Would be great to see a few large organizations start to implement. I guess that is what Altimeter and Dachis are about.
TO'B
Reading these comments, I'd have to agree with Brandon Sutton in that Facebook is the 800 lb. Gorilla leading the way, but they are far from being a Switzerland of identity management. There needs to be an intermediary that manages this identity - OpenID is close (and getting better), but still far from being widely accepted as the platform of Identification management.
A true SRM should (would) be an agnostic profile service that the end-user controls. Let them manage and release data points to whomever & wherever they decide. That'd be the killer social app.
Single sign-on, universal conversation API - that's the discussion I was having with others as Sidewiki launched, but it seems not to be getting a lot of buzz/traction (and some opposition.)
Then there's the idea of WHOSE platform becomes universal. I've hit a variant of this problem with the fact that the Website I help run somehow blocks being logged in via Google Accounts (so I can't use Sidewiki there or at a few other sites), and it's not a Google problem because the Windows Live sign-in also is blocked - even when I'm logged in on other tabs. And it's not a PC problem because I see it across numerous PCs.
In other words, some piece of code is blocking that log-in presumably. If someone likes one social Web/platform offering over others, or doesn't like them at all, could they block access like this? Does make me wonder if the global social Web system would have so many holes in it - intentionally or othewise - so as to make it hard to universalize (is that a word?;-)
It's like I'm in a WWI foxhole, and as the bullets fly and we gain muddy ground by inches, I see an ELO-colored spaceship flying overhead. I keep pointing... they keep shooting and slipping in the mud;-)
I'm not up-to-speed on what OpenID is up to, but I agree that the future of the digital society has to include a single sign-in experience to enable individuals to move seamlessly from one space to another.
Beyond a seamless experience, however, I suspect that having visibility into our online activities will jolt many into being more aware of their digital footprints. Faced with a dashboard tracking our digital interactions, perhaps we may become more conscious of our digital broadcasts and be more protective of our privacy.
Torben Rick
The technical challenges of intelligently processing the (un)natural language which social interactions produce is huge. I say "un"natural as tweets, for example, do not adhere to regular conversation or language practises.
The coming together of mutiple IDs is something we've all been waiting for for a while and Facebook connect is largely beginning to succeed where the geeky easily misunderstood OpenID did not.
Once that happens the question of personalisation remains. "Crowd sourcing" (a dubious term at best) is not enough. Analysis of mass habits goes some way to provide a basic filtering of content (i.e. forms of collaborative filtering) but trust networks and reputation engines based upon taste and past behaviour are the future (although admittedly, I'm bias http://blog.rummble.com/whatisrummble/ ) as only they provide a real level of personalised filtering beyond the sentiment of the crowd.
What can we do to accelerate this? Because the Web is fragmenting due to separate identities, which frankly makes this future hard to get to.
(the other) Brian
The Forrester analysis is too rooted in the concept of digital place with insufficient attention to the dynamics of digital space.
See also http://richardstacy.com/2009/09/21/are-social-n...
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
... just one of a million ideas running thru my head
I love this post and it got me thinking and I begun reflecting. Let me share a bit with you and your many readers.
For us with MyComMetrics (http://My.ComMetrics.com) innovation is a stage-by-stage process (idea to prototype) where each stage of development is combined with regular measurements of factors we perceive as critical for achieving success, particularly regarding time used and money spent ... to the success in the market as reflected by new subscribers and their feedback about the product.
I am having a difficult time to see where social networks innovate here? Yes, of course they provide feedback or they signal thumbs up or down about what we did ..... they even provide suggestions for improvement and so forth. But they did not come up with the original idea, did they?
I still believe that crowdsourcing is a myth or misconception – crowds do not innovate, individuals do. In fact the wisdom of crowds can only be conventional. So social networks may help but I cannot see where they innovate. Maybe you can help me on this one?
Thanks for this nice post.
Urs
@ComMetrics
PS. One of my esteemed friends has even suggested that crowdsourcing is: "... to me simply a stupid mashup of a word and it smacks of the lowest common denominator."
I think it is interesting how technology has evolved through the years and how the social web is now the basis for many businesses and means of communication. It is also interesting to see how the social web is predicted to evolve in the future. I have been learning about CRM (customer relationship marketing) in my classes, and it is interesting how CRM has transformed to SRM for the world on the web.
Personally I envision what Doc Searls new book titled "The Intention Economy". Instead of the web silos sucking markets to them we the people will be enabled to decide and pull which markets are relevant to our interest, our needs and wants. By this I mean the web will evolve and enable us to maintain our own "virtual homes" and when we seek something all we'll do is ask and it will come to use on our terms and our time.
The ultimate "social" process will be when we have even greater influence over markets and control which markets we participate in. Make sense?