7 social media predictions for 2010

2009 was a great year for social media. Twitter went mainstream and Facebook dominated the world, replacing social networking websites that had a strong foothold in their country. As the world became more aware of social media and web 2.0 techniques, we saw some interesting marketing efforts from Pepsi, Fiat and Pringles, among others. With the new year upon us, let’s take a moment to look ahead at what we think will be the big game changers of the new year.

Micro communities - Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are the big impersonal dogs that dominate the social media world as we know it. People are starting to look for smaller, more relevant communities in the coming year. 2010 will see the rise of Ning, Xing and Linked In, as well as location based communities like Foursquare and Gowalla, which will be purchased and incorporated into Facebook and Google in 2011.

Facebook starts to slip - After obtaining the seemingly impossible in five years (350 million members), Facebook has justly secured their place as top dog in the social media world. There is no where to go but down from here. While expanding their functionality and destroying their credibility through poor decisions on how to handle user privacy, Facebook will lose members as users become overwhelmed with follow requests, app requests, security settings and a million other little things.

Google makes search more relevant - Google released real-time search at the end of 2009, but it’s not as refined as it could be. Google will continue to refine their search techniques based on the personal experience of the user. This means my search for a thai restaurant in San Francisco could be completely different from your search. Google rushed real-time search out in order to beat Bing to the punch, but expect it to be streamlined by the end of the year.

Gaming becomes more social - We talked about console gaming going social in our hugely popular blog post last month, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 2010 will be a rebirth in gaming with games not just linking to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but by allowing users to create original content through them as well. Add to that online gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Crowdstar who are expanding the capability of their games. Also, expect mobile gaming to go to great heights with the iPhone and Android phones changing the way we envision mobile gaming.

Big Brother won’t have to watch us – we’ll do it ourselves - In our ever expanding need to feel relevant and hip, we now do what people a decade years ago would have viewed as implausible. Privacy isn’t an issue like it used to be. We now tell people where we are and what we’re doing every moment. Thanks to Foursquare, Google Geotagging, Gowalla and Britekite, we can automatically update our location without lifting a finger. Expect this trend to continue, and get much more invasive, before it gets better.

iPhone loses ground to Android - Sure, the iPhone is great, but it has one major drawback: it’s only available on one phone. Now imagine the same software that makes the iPhone great spread over several phones with cheaper price-tags. The Android has the potential to be a game changer in next gen phone development. With several phones coming out in 2010, the huge market share that the iPhone now controls will quickly erode.

Companies discover how to use social media - 2009 was the year that businesses discovered that the internet isn’t just a children’s toy any more. 2010 will be the year that companies finally start using social media as an important marketing tool and will devote more of the advertising funds to online efforts. 2009 saw some interesting uses of Twitter, Facebook and iPhone apps as companies dipped their toes in the pond. Now that they’ve explored a little, expect some interesting online campaigns.