Social Media to Rock Web

Its' always interesting to read the tech press in January, when all of the predictions come out for the year ahead. The latest comes from vnunet.com, who has declared that in 2008, social media will rock the web.

I don't doubt it—-after all, social media has been gaining ground for 20 years now, and I have yet to witness many naysayers. Yes, there are those who are afraid of social media, specifically organizations who don't care to listen to their consumers, but overall, it's hard to challenge the human need to connect, which is the core of social media.

I specifically liked this part of vnunet's prediction:

"Traditional models for businesses to research their consumers are also expected to change. Customer information will be enriched by data found on the social web to supersede traditional research tools such as questionnaires and focus groups. Feedback and influence from social networks will ultimately become more significant factors in the purchasing decision cycle."

It's that combination of objective data exposed to the consumer, combined with subjective consumer feedback that is compelling. No matter what the product or service, there's always a way to feed this information to the user and then to open the loop so that they can respond. Amazon is so good at this. But when you look at your (or your client's) product or service, think about what data may provide meaning and how you can enable that feedback loop.