At the end of 2006, we asked the Fellows of the Society for New Communications Research to offer their prognostications for 2007. These included: an increase in the popularity of YouTube, the prediction that every presidential hopeful would have a blog, the increased importance of virtual currency and Second Life, the emergence of social media tools that help people educate, not just communicate, and APIs, plug-ins and widgets that further enhance social media websites’ functionalities.
Last year, the SNCR Fellows also predicted that corporate communications professionals and PR agencies would begin incorporating social media tools and programs into their initiatives on a large scale in 2007. with the caveat that those in the financial services and healthcare industries would keep a tight rein on sanctioned and unsanctioned use of social community technologies by employees – to remain in compliance with regulations such as Graham Leach-Bliley, SOX and HIPAA.
They foresaw the incredible rapid deterioration of the traditional daily newspaper business model due to citizen media, and conjectured that Google’s stock price would surpass 750. They speculated that there would be more consolidations and acquisitions in the social media and new communications technology space, and that there would begin to be some major lawsuits against social media properties.
Many of these predictions and prognostications did indeed come to pass, and so we thought we’d try it again – with a twist. This year we asked our Fellows to divide their predictions into categories: what they definitely believed would happen in 2008, what they believed might possibly happen, and what they envisioned as some wild scenarios. Here’s what they had to say:
In terms of social media adoption, many of the SNCR’s Fellows believe that 2008 will bring an increase in microblogging (e.g., Twitter), that more strategic importance will be placed on corporate blogging – even as overall blog growth continues to slow and some organizations decide against engaging in social media at all. But, for those who do engage in social media, the Fellows also predict a greater adoption of other social media tools and technologies in addition to blogging, and predict that more individuals and organizations will engage in multi-media communications projects – integrating audio, video, virtual worlds, etc.
They foresee a continued increase in the adoption of social media by the nonprofit sector and an increase in the use of social media tools for education. They also see a continued and widening adoption of social media for political communications, but suggest that there will be important missed opportunities.
All of these developments, they agreed suggest an urgent need for new media literacy.
The new year, the SNCR Fellows suggest, will possibly bring significant developments in semantic search. They also believe that social networks will become more vertical in nature and niche-oriented. There could be an increased level of transparency on the part of organizations as they continue to open the lines of communication both internally and externally using social media tools, and encourage conversations with employees and external audiences, resulting in a more open sharing of corporate decision making.
They also see the possibility of a large scale privacy crisis revolving around a social network(s), potential litigation from a regulatory body, the development of better measurements and standards surrounding social media, and public sentiment possibly turning against blogger/pundits.
In the category of “very remote possibilities," the Fellows explored several wide-ranging ideas, including: the creation of a universal identity for all social networks and the possible involvement of the government in domain allocations. They imagined that mainstream media brands (including newspapers and magazines) may enjoy a resurgence as they become more savvy and understand how to incorporate social media, develop new business models and re-invent themselves as social media properties or hybrid models of traditional media with a citizen media and/or online community complement.
Finally, they painted a possible doomsday scenario and asked what would happen if we completely lost the Internet. Where would we begin and what would we create if we had to start over from scratch?
We invite you to offer your thoughts and predictions. What do you think that 2008 holds in store?
