Social Media Thoughts and Musings March 2008  

Social burnout

I have thought about this subject for a good while, and while I personally am not burning out on social networking I am wondering how many users do suffer from social burnout or fatigue. In the last two weeks or so there has been much speculation on facebook’s traffic drop and even an article about facebook’s death spiral. I believe that most of the cause behind the traffic drop is social networking fatigue more than anything else. I know I sometimes would like to log off my computer for a week or ten days just to clear my mind. Unfortunately, my job is online, so I am stuck so to speak.

I myself, on occasion don’t feel like interacting with anyone online or off. I guess that is a normal feeling for nearly every human being on the planet. More and more sites and services are becoming social media oriented and I think that users are getting frustrated and probably tired of maintaining a dozen or more profiles, messaging people and adding information to their profiles.

What do you think? Add a comment and share your opinion.

The next big thing in social media

The last three weeks or so have been chock full of new social sites launching in addition to all of the feature launches on nearly every popular social site on the planet. So just what is the next big thing? I firmly believe that video is going be big on the online social scene. Early this month I compiled a list of all the social sites I could find (243 to date). The largest majority of sites are related to video, music or pictures (mostly video). While music will always be big with social users, video is going to be the ticket in the upcoming months and years. You can quote me on that.

Social news (user-generated content) is also gaining ground in social media. Humans are curious “animals” and love being the first to know about things. I think social news sites that also offer social networking features are going to take market share away from pure social networking sites. While social news is fairly new to the popular social sites scene, it will continue to grow. I think there is room for growth on this niche.

What do you think the next big thing in social media is going to be? Add a comment and share your opinion.

Social aggregation will it help?

Social aggregation is making headway but I am not so sure that the majority of them actually solve a real problem other than concentrating a users activities in one place. While social aggregation makes it easier for their friends to follow them, it still lacks focus in my opinion.