Social Media Predictions for 2011: Facebook, Linkedin + Twitter to Maintain (and Grow) “Top Dog” Status
Posted In Blog,Social Media
Author: Mayra Ruiz-McPherson
ClickZ’s recent article 21 Social Media Predictions and Trends for 2011 lists an important observation as its #11:
Social media technologies will start to consolidate and only the strong will survive: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. (Sorry, Foursquare, MySpace, Orkut, Gowalla, etc.)
I found this prediction and trend to be of interest. Often companies and businesses want to be everywhere in the social space but ultimately, the mainstream utility tools and social networks that seem to “matter most” as a whole — and will continue to for some time — are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
I could be wrong but tend to agree with ClickZ’s prediction. It appears from various industry headlines that both LinkedIn and Facebook are each flirting with IPO status and that transformation will surely further cement their “top dog” positions in the mainstream online community space for at least some years to come.
This 2011 trend or prediction, however, doesn’t mean companies or organizations should not explore other niche online communities. In addition to mainstream social network engagement, it is important to identify and also participate in a handful of niche, smaller online communities relevant to your business or industry. Overall, you should focus your social media energies and connections to participating where its makes the most sense for your business. Ideally, that would mean you’d be engaged where your customers or prospects are or frequent most.
Of special note, ClickZ’s prediction above also implies that other social networks such as Foursquare, MySpace, Orkut, Gowalla, etc. are more likely to fade or become less prominent. While I don’t entirely disagree with part of the prediction, I do believe that not all will fade away into the sunset (and if some do, it won’t be any time soon). Some services will be acquired outright. Others, like MySpace, will re-brand and re-niche to better cater their online communities to more focused, targeted groups.
I think 2011 will be an interesting year for businesses and social media. There were already many solid and creative examples of “best practices” and engagement in 2010; 2011 promises to unveil even more …
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I don't think location services interest will go away. It can do a lot of good and the monetary potential is still greater than what has been achieved.
As Facebook and others are finding out, the bigger you get (or want to be by merging) the greater the Federal view into your business. The government is keenly aware of potential privacy concerns and of course, some of these senators just have nosy interests. So being purchased is not as favorable in some cases as it seems. Foursquare is a good example of a company not ready to open up its business for view to anyone so they raised money instead.
But of course, only time will tell.
@deannie Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Ultimately, we can agree to disagree but I will say that hype does tend to fade on most *anything* in general, not just location-based services so I do feel that hype will die down over time. This doesn't lessen the existence of location-based services but the superficial hoopla that traditionally surrounds some services when they are newer than others will pass. Additionally, I did not mean to imply that that all location-based services will sell out to larger networks but my guess is that most (not all but most) will. As shared in my post, these are "predictions" … who knows what will happen in the future?? I totally agree with you that only time will tell. The sure thing to note is that no matter how big any service is, it can also fall out of favor, relevance or prominence as we've seen with MySpace and others. And as invincible as Facebook and Twitter appear to be today, who knows what new social networks or social utility tools tomorrow will bring?? It will be interesting to see how location-based services fare over time well beyond 2011. Thanks D !!