Social media in 2011, and 2012

FROM: http://www.troymedia.com/blog/2012/01/01/social-media-in-2011-and-2012/

2011 may have been the year Google finally got social networking right with Google+

January 1, 2012

CALGARY, Jan. 1, 2012/ Troy Media/ - It’s that time of year again for Digital Doug to summarize the year in social, fess up to the accuracy of last year’s predictions (or lack thereof), and break out the crystal ball for 2012. Here goes:

2011 may have been the year Google finally got social networking right with Google+. After dismal failures in previous years with Buzz and Wave, Google stayed true to their roots and kept launching new spaghetti at the wall until something stuck.

Another, perhaps more notable event in 2011 was the successful initial public offering (IPO) of LinkedIn.com. The stock has consistently traded above its $45 opening price, currently trading at around $62.90. Obviously the market sees value in the “world’s largest professional network” and for good reason. As baby boomers retire and labor becomes increasingly scarce, LinkedIn is sitting on a gold mine – everyone’s resume.

Speaking of IPOs, social coupon creator Groupon last fall launched the largest IPO for a U.S. web company since Google, raising $700 million. As reported by Reuters: “The global leader in ‘daily deals’ is now valued at almost $13 billion . . .” Groupon is now trading at about $20.63 amidst concerns that long term prospects for the company are poor as their offering is fairly undifferentiated.

Other noteworthy events in social 2011 include the launch of Facebook’s timeline feature, an attempt to make that social network the diary of your entire life (resulting in lots of pages for ads to roll by on). Twitter was integrated into Apple’s mobile operating system iOS, further cementing that network as the way to share content created on the fly. Speaking of content creation, the explosion of Instagram, the photo sharing service that applies cool, retro effects to your photos, quite possibly made 2011 the year of the photo, and finally Facebook gobbled up and then closed location-based service Gowalla.

On the world stage, we saw everything from the ridiculous (Anthony Weiner tweeting his, well, you know, and Charlie Sheen’s #winning) to the muddled #OccupyWallStreet to the tragedy of the Japanese earthquake to the sublime news of Osama bin Laden’s demise, all played out on social media.

Closer to home, the National Post’s Toban Dyck added memoriams for Jack Layton​ and the outrage over the Canucks riot to the list of topics that trended on Twitter in 2011.

Back at the beginning of the year I predicted five social trends for 2011. Let’s see how I did:

Social software as a service (so-called cloud-based applications) will remain niche and fragmented. I’d say there’s still no adequate social media dashboard nor analytics solution and Social CRM is in its infancy so I give myself full marks for this one. (If only school had worked this way!)

Companies will measure Return On Investment (ROI) not audience-size in 2011. Wrong. People are still impressed by number of followers, which bears no relationship to selling more stuff or upping your stock price or cementing your reputation. E-marketer did report Chief Marketing Officers are more concerned about this, so that’s good, but we ain’t there yet.

Corporations will broadcast less and listen/engage more on social media. Barely, but there’s a lot of corporate spam still happening out there. Dialog does not come easily to corporations.

Advertising will flood social channels not already loaded with it. True, Twitter introduced numerous sponsorship opportunities for business and Facebook has added sponsored stories to its arsenal. Somebodies gotta pay for all this sharing, and it looks like ads will be the way.

Apps will give way to better mobile sites and HTML5. Nope. I was thinking too techie here; users won’t have it, they seem to prefer the superior experience of a native app, even if that leads to phone screen clutter.

So my track record as a social media swami runs about 50/50 for 2011. Harumph. Guess I better keep my day job.

Here’s my shot at predicting some social digital trends for 2012:

Business and media will really start to take advantage of trans-media web publishing, by which I mean news, ads, stories, publicity and so on will be packaged up in web-based multimedia collections, like a blend of landing pages, squeeze pages, social media releases tweets, photo albums and blog posts. Essentially a micro-site for important stories.

Content producers will become content distributors. Comedian Louis C.K. fired a shot over the bow of traditional media distribution when he recently released a comedy special via the web instead of via major cable network as he has done in the past. As MSNBC’s Today Show reported “Louis C.K. cut out TV networks by selling his latest comedy special online – then used network airtime to promote it. The strategy helped him earn a cool million dollars in a matter of days, half of which he’s giving away to his staff and charities.” Authors, photographers, artists and other content creators now have their own distribution network, the web, and Web 2.0 tools to package, price and promote it. Who needs your stinking publishing house in 2012?

Cords will not be cut. Network and cable TV will be just fine for a good long while, thank you very much. Sure, traditional television will have to become increasingly social and interactive in a bid to stave off incursions into their turf by the likes of YouTube, but web TV is just too choppy to ascend to the top of the heap in the family room, for now.

That’s it for 2011. Happy New Year and be sure to tweet your whereabouts, but please, avoid your own personal Weinergate and tweet responsibly.

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary social media agency communicatto. Find him on Twitter at @dblacombe.