Monday this week was a holiday, so I was able to do something I rarely let myself do: I rested.
I didn't go to the office. I didn't write some blog posts. I didn't catch up on email. I didn't put mulch down, organize the basement, pay bills, or clean the house either. I simply got together with three friends and just hung out by the pool all day. It was awesome! We had no agenda and our conversations were deliciously random all day long.
And in this open space, an interesting point emerged: what's next for social media. The four of us are steeped in social media professionally, and so we're all getting perhaps a little bit tired of the conversations that keep happening. So we wondered aloud what the next level is going to be.
I am going to think about it for a bit and I promise to post some thoughts, but I thought I would ask my readers first. What do you think? What's the next level in social media? As leaders, where should we be steering the conversation?
I’m interested to see what’s next as well, but I’m mostly at a loss for any solid ideas. And it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile to play devil’s advocate for a moment: perhaps there isn’t a “next level” for social media.
Or, to be more precise, perhaps this revolution in communications is mostly over and the “next level” of social media is a steady expansion marked by incremental improvements.
Clay Shirky’s explanation of the social media revolution has always stuck with me the most because he compared it to the other major historic revolutions in communications: the printing press, the telephone, the television, and the birth of the internet. In each of those cases, after an initial explosion of use and new applications, they became commonplace. That’s not to downplay their significance, of course, but a television, for example, is still more or less what it was when it was invented: a screen that displays moving images transmitted from another location or device. It has been enhanced, certainly, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed.
I certainly can’t say what the future holds, and another major wave of new innovation in communications or social media may indeed be on the way. These revolutions seem to be coming along more frequently now. But, I’m just suggesting this as a possibility.
Conveniently, a relevant follow-up on this topic that I stumbled upon via Twitter this afternoon: An interesting take on how major social networks might or could join forces with whole industries: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2010/07/05/the-future-of-social-networks-is-vertical/
Great question, Jamie. Very hard to know the answer to this but too irresistable a question to try.
Here’s my two cents on what might (or might not) happen…
http://ow.ly/28oSk