Prediction 2
Facebook will flourish or flounder
Everything turns on the network's ability to maintain momentum, avoid more ham-fisted privacy flaps, and show marketers how to engage and interact with members in ways that don't feel like advertising. MySpace, with 70 million users, and Friendster have considerable reach and assets even though they've been eclipsed by Facebook's fast march and PR blitz. But frankly, no one really knows why Facebook has stormed ahead and in the absence of a sustainable formula, that growth and popularity could disappear as quickly as it come about. There are no doubts that Murdock's minions and many others are gunning to get back in the game, not to mention non-U.S. communities and vertical communities that have begun to show substantial growth.
Look for a horse race in terms of new applications, new features, or new functions and new ways to integrate or manage Facebook and other social media accounts into common work and life flows. People want to participate but are having difficulty managing different accounts or dealing with the time suck that social media has quickly become. A bunch of tools, possibly modeled after TweetDeck, will emerge to organize, manage, and connect different social media applications. Along with the tools, expect best practices to evolve for linking your profiles and friendships to achieve specific goals like finding a job, finding a love partner, generating leads, or seeding vertical conversations.
More brands will use social media as standing research panels by asking questions, soliciting opinions, or conducting polls and surveys. Some gut checks and qualitative research will move online because you can gather a carefully composed crowd quickly and cheaply and can target advocates, neutrals, and competitive users easily. Expect an explosion in A/B testing and even product development testing to take place online and on social media platforms.
