The Future is Social
Posted by Petrice Gaskin at Jun. 11, 2008
Last week, Scott and I met with Howard, our business adviser and began the process of hammering out vision and mission statements for the company. The meeting was interesting and exciting because it not only helped us focus our vision for the company, but allowed us to discuss our vision for the future of social networks.
The proliferation of smartphones will help to strengthen the bonds between social networks and real-time social interactions. As smartphone use grows, and the technology and apps improve, the reach of social networks will expand until most social activities and interactions will be referenced by a social network framework. For example, if you hit it off with someone--let's call her Sophia-- at a party, you would whip out your smartphone and get Sophia's name, number, and email. Instantly, you'd pull up Sophia's profile and befriend her on whatever social networks you use (Facebook, Myspace, Bebo--whatever). All the information for your friends and contacts wouldn't merely be saved in your phone; instead that information would be stored and organized within a social network platform, either uploaded to the phone or accessible from the phone via a cloud-computing setup.
If you wanted to email Sophia an invitation to your birthday party or call her up to invite her to the beach, you'd open your phone, go to your social network platform and either email or call her from within that network. Or if you wanted to introduce Sophia to some of your other friends, you would access the video conferencing technology on your respective phones and allow Sophia to meet and hangout with them.
As smartphone usage continues to increase and the technology improves, the possibilities for social networks are immense, varied and exciting. Social networks initially took off because they were a convenient and expeditious way of strengthening and maintaining connections. Technological innovations will continue to allow social networks to perform that role, in addition to the roles of sharing increasingly complex data and/or music, and becoming platforms that allow two or more individuals to collaborate on projects and easily share the results of their efforts with the rest of their friends or the internet at large.
The proliferation of smartphones will help to strengthen the bonds between social networks and real-time social interactions. As smartphone use grows, and the technology and apps improve, the reach of social networks will expand until most social activities and interactions will be referenced by a social network framework. For example, if you hit it off with someone--let's call her Sophia-- at a party, you would whip out your smartphone and get Sophia's name, number, and email. Instantly, you'd pull up Sophia's profile and befriend her on whatever social networks you use (Facebook, Myspace, Bebo--whatever). All the information for your friends and contacts wouldn't merely be saved in your phone; instead that information would be stored and organized within a social network platform, either uploaded to the phone or accessible from the phone via a cloud-computing setup.
If you wanted to email Sophia an invitation to your birthday party or call her up to invite her to the beach, you'd open your phone, go to your social network platform and either email or call her from within that network. Or if you wanted to introduce Sophia to some of your other friends, you would access the video conferencing technology on your respective phones and allow Sophia to meet and hangout with them.
As smartphone usage continues to increase and the technology improves, the possibilities for social networks are immense, varied and exciting. Social networks initially took off because they were a convenient and expeditious way of strengthening and maintaining connections. Technological innovations will continue to allow social networks to perform that role, in addition to the roles of sharing increasingly complex data and/or music, and becoming platforms that allow two or more individuals to collaborate on projects and easily share the results of their efforts with the rest of their friends or the internet at large.