Thoughts about The Future of the Social Web?

A few days ago I saw a reference on the NewWest.Net Facebook page pointing to a Nieman Reports article titled "An Explosion Prompts Rethinking of Twitter and Facebook" by Courtney Lowery, Editor at NewWest.Net. I wrote a comment that I posted under the article.

This is a summary statement she made at the end of the article:

"Just like every other news organization—online and offline—we’re still assessing just how and when to use social media. There are still a lot of unanswered, even unasked, questions. But it’s here to stay—and it’s here to help us, if we can get past seeing it as a marketing vehicle and learn how to use it to create community by developing a relationship with our readers.

I will post my comment to the article below and also add a link a link to a related article I found at destination CRM..com written by Jessica Tsai, titled "Social Media: The Five-Year Forecast." This article examines in detail the Forester Research Report by Jerimiah K. Owyang titled "The Future of the Social Web" (This link goes to an executive summary of the report which is available for purchase.

Gary O. Grimm says:

September 16, 2009 at 4:09pm

You have provided very good insights Courtney that other government agencies, organizations and businesses could benefit from. The Web started by being a way to push selected information to a wider audience via a web site. Over the past 15 years some organizations have slowly provided more interactive opportunities on their web sites. For years there have also been numerous (probably millions) of small citizen initiated interactive discussion groups and forums. But more recently we are experiencing the growth of big organized social networking systems like FriendFeed, MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter. Now millions of people are participating in the the most popular of these, FaceBook and Twitter. Unfortunately these services often compete to try to dominate one another.

My research indicates that this is just the beginning of this social networking phenomenon. Sooner than we think, I believe, all of these services will become aggregated into something different, where an individual person and their activities, ideas and civic engagement will become the focus. This network won't have a corporate name, but will operate on topics of personal interest. Hopefully many of these interests will be aimed at citizens involvement in important social, civic and environmental issues.