Tuesday 15 December 2009
In Last decade, Next decade, Richard reviewed the tremendous changes in the IT sector over the past ten years. Tola Sargeant’s predictions for the UK Public Sector yesterday was the first of our look to the future. Today we look at Puni Rajah's assessment of how social technologies, platforms and media will evolve. We will publish views on Software, and IT Services during the rest of the week.
Social for business
Two months ago, as I started preparing for a series of CFO roundtables on information governance, the issue most participants wanted discussed was social media, and what investments businesses should be considering. Not that the usual topics of outsourcing, business-It alignment and investment governance were not of interest. Just that social media was the most pressing medium term concern. It seemed to sum up the state of affairs rather well - corporate managers, including CFOs, understand something big is happening, but are not sure how businesses should respond.
Building a coherent approach to social technologies in the workplace requires a view of where social media is heading. Our predictions here are based on current adoption patterns, organisational and cultural realities and economic imperatives we face as the next decade beckons.
People, avatars and brands - quantity and quality growth
Social will enjoy increased adoption, and we will become better at distinguishing technologies (applications such as tagging, status updates), platforms (social environments such as Facebook) and content (conversations, information, opinion, collectively coined as media).
Holway's MyTop will apply more than ever before, and as we string together access to various technologies, platforms and media, we will each have greater choice in what is included in our inner circle. Brands too have been developing social identities, and as early success stories promote confidence, we will see an avalanche of corporate brands establishing social profiles.
Realtime search
Volume will drive smarter use, which in turn will lead to greater sophistication. Translation technologies will improve, connecting user generated content across language barriers.
Google has just linked with Twitter to expand its scope of searchable content to include the publication of dynamic social web content. Realtime search will also deliver additional commercial opportunities such as real-time conversations, discovery, and trend tracking.
Mobility
In the near term, social technologies will drive more of us further towards the mobile lifestyle. Device readiness (smartphones, netbooks, tablets) and wireless broadband availability allow us to do more on the go. This in turn will lead to simpler websites, faster to load, point functions. Apple’s AppStore is the best indicator of the future of applications.
Mobile payments will enable more nimble businesses and business processes. Square, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is the start of many such specialist clearing houses targeting specific demographics. Customers who can pay with confidence will be the hottest target markets.
Mobility, and user generated content, will also unleash a wave of localisation that will impact how businesses acquire customers, and deliver services and products. Platforms such as foursquare and ubertwitter (geo-tagging) create new opportunities for businesses and local communities. One example of augmented reality today with high business relevance is WorkSnug. Many more will proliferate.
Products, services, jobs and problems find their targets
Brands have started to include social marketing in their mix, and we expect social marketing to mature from ad-hoc experiments to broad implementation. 25% of search results for the 20 largest global brands are links to user-generated content, and as the socially networked population grows, this proportion will increase.
Jobs are being awarded on the basis of the right tweet, and terminated on account of the wrong one. Crowdsourcing is hitting its stride as testimonials from previous employers provide references and add a dimension of confidence.
More importantly, social technologies will reduce service delivery costs, and this in fact will truly be how social goes to work. For businesses, reducing the time from problem to resolution and allocating exactly the right resource means lower operating costs. Already today, online support communities and unified communications are creating efficiencies. Experimentations in health, emergency services, hospitality, utilities as well as retail will mature into mainstream adoption, and result in significant changes in delivery business processes.
Information culture
Perhaps the biggest opportunity lies in how our attitudes towards information and privacy will change. By 2010, Gen Y will be the largest demographic group in the workplace. These employees do not distinguish between personal and professional profiles, and their proliferation in the workplace will increasingly challenge conventional corporate policies. Mind you, the problems will be the same old ones, but they will now be accelerated and exposed.
The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 55-65 year old females. In January 2008, we predicted that silver surfers will rule, and indeed, they will also influence how the online social scene evolves. From health matters to online shopping, their conversations and communities will add spending power and gravitas.
New tools and skills
Monitoring conversations will be a lucrative niche. Tools such as Radian6, ScoutLabs, SociafyQ, and Cision are just the start. These capabilities will live in the cloud, and offer low cost precision that will in turn influence ROI measurement for marketing and sales effectiveness on the whole. Analytics will be the hottest skill in the next decade, as more information is produced, searched, indexed. Social middleware providers like Socialware will play a crucial role in bridging the new and traditional worlds of enterprise IT.
But most significantly, the economic environment has prepared us for change, and consumers and businesses are in the mood to try something different. We are at an inflection, where proliferation low-cost, high performance technologies will permanently change the way we run our lives, and consequently, our businesses.
Posted by Puni Rajah at '20:12'
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