3 Trends in Social Media & Web 3.0 (Part 3)

The third trend is the challenge and concern of privacy in this day and age, where spatial distances between individuals and their social networks are rapidly being reduced.  The sociographs of all are increasingly being inter-connected, status updates and conversations are broadcast to all and so ...

(3) Privacy is but a Window away


In trend (1), I brought up examples from Google and Facebook, who have either through partnering or acquisitions, been positioning their social layer offering as the one dashboard for consumers to converge for their status updates, chats, emails, content uploads, sharing, collaborations etc.

Imagine now with trend (2), where we see integrations and inter-connections occuring in Google and Twitter (search and recently in Buzz), Bing search powered in Facebook, Bing search incorporating Tweets, the lines between "public" and "private" conversations in and across social networks become increasingly greyed.  Everyone's sociographs, relationships and interactions can be eyed upon constantly in your friends' online streams.


Augmented reality is cool. Today, we have apps like Wikitude which tag places with contextual information. Now imagine in the near future, when you could activate an app in a mobile device, then by holding the camera of the mobile device towards a stranger nearby, be able to draw down the online profile of that stranger, based on what he has tweeted, updated into his Facebook etc. We are entering into a world where every consumer all around is being tagged. And this augmented reality becomes scary as an afterthought.

Privacy is and will be a key concern as we move into a much more inter-connected WEB 3.0, where everyone's lives grow more intertwined with one another's.  However, there looks to be much promise in the future, where all our computing will occur in the cloud and our lives efficiently ordered through quick clicks.

Take a look at this video from Microsoft's 2019 vision.  Certainly inspiring.

Later,
Nelson Wee
@nelsonwee
Additional links to read:
1. Your Social Networks: How Open Should You Be? (by Dr. Rachna Jain)
2. Google and Yahoo are indexing Google Buzz
3. Google Gets The Facebook Treatment: Privacy Group Files FTC Complaint Over Buzz
4. [updated: 19-FEB] Please Rob Me; the Perfect Compliment to Foursquare and Twitter

3 Trends in Social Media & Web 3.0 (PART 1)

Do you remember Ask Jeeves?  Valet, concierge services, whether offline, online or a hybrid of both click and mortar have been a facination of mine - how we as man constantly strive to get the automation of semantic understanding going, to enable our every whim and fancy more easily achievable with today's or tomorrow's hardware and software platforms. 

As an on-going observation, I put together my thoughts on what I see as the 3 trends on-going in today's social media, web 3.0 - how we are moving into the futuristic age of the Semantic Web (we are getting closer) and what we could look forward or look out for.



(1) Doing all your computing in the cloud

Google and Facebook are positioning themselves as your life's dashboard.  You do not need to have powerful computers or all the applications in your PC or mobile phone to perform tasks.  Cloud computing that's the buzz word and that's where a number of organisations are moving towards. 

Before Google Buzz came along, I was reading about a Singaporean company called Social Wok (have a look at the screenshot I link from SocialWok) who at last year's TechCrunch50 conference, made a big splash by winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps - launching a social network wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps.  In 22-JAN ’10: SocialWok launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail. With the new gadget, Socialwok’s interface will appear within Gmail’s main canvas. Users can view, post and comment on updates; access feeds, files and Google Docs and search for posts, people, feeds, and files. Hmm, thought: a potential candidate for Google Acquisition?  Then along came #googlebuzz (just go search for Google Buzz or #googlebuzz in Twitter).

Then you have Facebook, where you can broadcast your life's moments, email, chat, upload and share photos, play social games like farming with friends and there are lots more apps which you could access from Facebook or apps you could link to Facebook available in the various Apps Stores.

More later as I talk about the other 2 trends
(2) My life needs to be served by a click (& quickly - thanks!)

(3) Privacy is but a window away

Nelson Wee
@nelsonwee