The first speaker of the event, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester, made a big impression on me. He stated “that Communities will continue to evolve over the next few years to and become companies and institutions that will be in power of product brands and services”. Basically not new for me, however the steps that he described on the road ahead I find very interesting. In the following article I will describe these steps.
Fact is that the Netherlands is taking the lead and is far ahead in Europe with the penetration of Social Media in daily live and work. 40% of the dutch are on Social Networks such as Hyves, Facebook, Linkedin and twitter being the most popular. Innovative companies differentiate themselves by setting up communities for their customers where they can discus products and experiences.
The whole social experience nowadays is rather chaotic or disjointed for a lot of people. People talk about, lots participate, but by far not everyone, and actually most people are still unaware of what they can accomplish or do with it. Let alone where we are evolving to. Part of the reason for this is that most consumers still have separate identities within the several social networks that they visits. These are still separate islands.
Simple technology should provide a ‘portable identity’ within the near future that will enable consumer to take their identity with them wherever they surf on the web. This will cause a significant transformation of marketing, eCommerce, CRM and advertizing. Mobile ID’s are just the beginning of the steps in this process of independent sites towards a total social experience. Consumers will start depending on their peers and the opinions of others when they are buying online. Socially connected consumers will empower communities and pull away the decision making power from the brands itself. Eventually this will lead to communities that will create and develop the next generation of products by themselves.
Soical Networks are a representation of what we do. We connect to it and share info. Ofcourse companies and brands would like tap into this information and review our social data, profiles and friends. The problem right now is that we are all working on different islands or networks which leads to frustration with the consumers using the technology as they have to register their info over and over again as well as the brands that would like to connect to us.
The web is now evolving to a phase where the various networks can overlap in different area’s and share information through SocialID’s which allows for brands and people to start communication in a totally different way. The evolution of the web in this area proceeds through 5 phases or ‘era’s’as Owyang calls them, these are:
1. Era of Social Relationships (people connect and share).
This is the first development fase of the social web as it started in the 90’s and as we now know it. Simple data is stored and can be shared with each other. This process that has already taken place forms the basis of the following four era’s that will be described below.
2. Era of Social Functionality (Social networks become operating systems).Today’s Social Networks have evolved passed the stages of ‘friend’ networks to platforms that engage social interaction through various applications and give a new meaning to communities. But even now social relations are still imprisoned within these sites.
3. Era of Social Conolization (every experience becomes soical).
In the following fase of social evolution, that we can probably expect later this year, technologies like OpenID and Facebook will enable people to surf the web and take their social online connections along with them. The bounderies of social networks and traditional websites are beginning to fade out and every website visit will become a social experience.
4. Era of Social Context (Personal and accurate content).
Next year, when most websites are starting to recognize the personal identities of their visitors and their social relations, companies will customize the information presented to visitors of the site based on their experience, their interests and preferences, and who their friends are. In addition to these intense social applications social networks will include email type functionality and form a basis for everyones online experience as they will move the information towards you. Which reminds me of the movie "Minority Report" from several years ago. Check this scene...
5. Era of Social Commerce (Communities shape future products and services).
In about two years from now, when social networks are the repository of personal identities and relationships, they become more powerful then ever and even more powerful than Corporates and CRM systems. Communities will become the driving force behind new innovations and brands. This will result in an inferior position of brands in relation to the community and will be a major turnaround in the power of the connected customer.
What do you mean Revolutionary? Democrocy rules!
