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

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!