Social media trends in 2012

January 3, 2012 2 Comments

English: Infographic on how Social Media are b...

What will be the major social media trends in 2012? According to this article, smartphones and tablets will play a significant role in the development of new services on the Social Web. We’ll also see the following trends:

  • More social media into corporate websites
  • An increase in social media usage on mobile devices
  • An increase in personal support
  • An increase in social media budgets
  • More social media advertising
  • More social gaming
  • News will be increasingly social
  • More websites will be compatible with mobile devices
  • More election campaigns will be run in social media
  • Your social media footprint will grow
  • Facebook users will surpass 1 billion

Filed under Social Web Tagged with , , , ,

Social search now by Google

October 27, 2009 Leave a comment

Google has just launched a new search service based on social data: Google Social Search. It works like this: if you have a Google profile, you can add the social networks you’re a member of (e.g. Twitter or FriendFeed). Then, when you do a Google search, you will also get results that have to do with your friends, like a post from a friend’s blog. Of course, if you don’t add this information to your Google profile, or if you are not logged into your Google account when you do a search, you won’t get any social results.

Here’s a demo video of this new service. You might notice that Google is quite concerned about privacy issues, reassuring us about the transparency of the service throughout the video:

Filed under Social Web Tagged with , , , , , ,

Innovative startups for 2009

February 7, 2009 Leave a comment

Erick Schonfeld, editor in TechCrunch, is wondering about the kinds of innovative startups we mostly need in 2009:

At the moment I’m writing this post, electric car batteries have the lead with 30%. Considering the serious global energy and pollution problems, I’ve voted for this option too. However, I’m sure we’re going to see lots of new Social Web startups in 2009, including social search tools and new mash-ups of Web 2.0 services.

Filed under Social Web, Technology/Internet Tagged with , , , , ,

The Social Web and the future of journalism

February 3, 2009 Leave a comment

The emerging Social Web technologies, such as blogging, micro-blogging, podcasting, etc, can be seen as a threat to ‘traditional’ journalism. The fact that we can instantly report news from our mobiles on Twitter, post videos on YouTube, and start public discussions on our blogs seems to be the start of a new era for the mass media. Will the news corporations be able to adapt to this new environment?

David Schlesinger, editor in chief in Reuters, was in the World Economic Forum at Davos last week, keeping us constantly updated through Twitter. Answering to criticism for this move, he claims:

In a democratic world where publishing platforms are available to all, editors and institutions like Reuters MUST add great value if they are to survive the competitive fight with the unintermediated storytellers.

I couldn’t agree more. The future of journalism is in our own hands! The sooner the mass media realize this, the better!

Filed under Social Web Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Our privacy on the Social Web

January 11, 2009 Leave a comment

How is well is our privacy protected on the Social Web? Of course, you can (and should) take some basic precaution measures, like not giving away sensitive information that can be used for financial fraud against you. However, there are issues beyond our hands that depend on how the Social Web handles our information.

Google recently published a paper entitled “(Under)mining Privacy in Social Networks”. The paper outlines some possible threats and proposes a number of counter-measures. In particular, the issues identified have to do with:

  1. Activity Streams: These are collections of actions we perform on the Social Web, e.g. adding a friend, or posting a video. We may not be aware of all the actions fed into our activity stream. Also, we may not be able to control who sees our activity stream. For example, when Facebook introduced Beacon, purchases that I would make on eBay would be fed into my activity stream and would also be available to my friends.
  2. Unwelcome Linkage: This happens when web links reveal information about us that we did not intend to.
  3. Merging Social Graphs: It is possible to uncover personal information by merging data from different Social Web sites.

Getting complete control over the construction and publication of your activity stream is the key. The authors propose a solution in the form of a privacy warning system. When you upload information on the Social Web, you should be warned whether this information could be used to make connections about you.

Filed under Social Web Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts