Sorry this is a long one, and a break in tradition, ie. I’ve not posted any photos.

Social networking
Social networking sites continue to receive more and more users, year on year. In January Facebook was listed 5th out of all websites, in terms of market share of visits. Its audience has increased by 277% over a one year period.

Advertising spending, on social networking sites, increased by 52% from 2008 to 2009, demonstrating it’s still a growing marketing.

Social networking is here to stay, but the way we use it will have to evolve. By simply having a Facebook or twitter account, we won’t be able to build business, or a useful community, social networking requires two way communications.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow users to socialise within a walled garden. The data they collect from users are used as assets to sell to application developers, therefore not benefiting the users or the community.

As users evolve they become more sophisticated and the limited facilities these models offer will limit their ability to both socialise and network. Users will become more and more adept at building profiles, finding communities, sharing images, links and video clips. These users will soon want to leave this closed model of social networking and will look for a new open model.

Organisations will see the limits of creating communities on existing social network sites, and will start creating there own social networks, having complete control over there community / communities, and tailoring all communications to those audiences.

Ning is a relatively new site that allows you to create your own exclusive community, with your own branding and all members of your community will have there own profile. Obviously users may be members of several other communities, much like the real word.

Ning has rapidly increased its ranking from the 23rd to the 12th most popular social networking site in the US. It currently receives 19.5 million visitors a month,

Instead of large communities like Facebook, there will be millions of smaller niche communities, allowing a more targeted approach to online marketing.

In ten years time, social networking may even be a redundant term, as it could be fused with every single website, and like many technologies become the norm. Much like the term e-Commerce, the idea of buying online, and buying offline are becoming less segregated.

The use of social networking on a business to business platform will evolve as organisations will slowly reduce restrictions to access these sites. Currently many businesses feel these sites waste their user’s time, and reduce productivity. This is probably the case, but as many niche communities are created, many will be business focused, in the traditional networking sense, and therefore acceptable during working hours, whereas others may be focused on networking as a form of enjoyment and pass time.

Twitter evolution

Twitter has grown rapidly since it creation in 2006. In the last year alone it February 2008, it went from being the 22nd most popular social networking site, to the 3rd. In the US it was the fastest growing social website, with a year on year increase by 343%. Facebook will stay around, and the twitter community has created 100’s of applications based on the twitter platform.

Scheduling
Twittertise : Schedule your tweets, more important when advertising on twitter.

Statistics gathering
Twist : See trends in twitter topics, most talked about stories.
Tweet Beep : Find out who is talking about your organisation.

Mailouts
Group Tweet : Send messages out to a particular group of people.

Mobile devices
Econsultancy Digital Marketers United, released figures in March 2009 stating that mobile channels will account for more than £6.1bn of global ad spend by 2011.

In Mobile Marketing forecast: 2006–2011‘, JupiterResearch predicts that advertising for messaging and display ads for mobile devices will more than double over the next five years.

The mobile market worth in 2006 was £457.3m, and with increased speed of connection, and the reduction in cost of technically proficient devices, this will only increase over time.

With advances in technology, users are far less patient. They want news feeds immediately, and be able to view sites whilst away from there office or laptop. To cater for this we should make sure our navigation system are useable on mobile devices, or we continue to provide RSS feeds, which the majority of phones can deal with.

Current suggestions
I suggest organisations should continue to use the current models in place, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace but research and develop our own Social Networking site, using tools like Ning and making the most of Twitter applications. As users evolve we can follow their social networking journey, and provide a bespoke community, giving more freedom as and when it’s required. By having our own social network site, we can make better use of information regarding users, and use data to develop more targeted communications, and links with external communities.

Go to www.barrykhan.co.uk for more info on web services.