Social Networking in the Real World: A New Explored Frontier?

Before there was internet people somehow managed to meet each other so once in a while. Since the digital revolution took place it is barely imaginable how people were able to arrange meetings and exchanged information in any organized way taking the Jurassic tools they were using into account. It seems ages ago that worrying about your profile going around in cyber space or exchanging documents in a mouse click were only actual for captain Kirk and his Enterprise buddies. And even in their reality Kirk, Spock and Scotty arranged face-to-face conferences at captain’s bridge to deal with endless upcoming surreal encounters.

As we know, the world of social gatherings has changed totally since web 2.0 has come to our villages. Forrester Research came out with an interesting outlook on the development of social media in the coming years. Jeremiah Owyang is senior analyst of Forrester Research and he describes five different era of social embracement for media to go through in these and years.

(1)    Era of social relationships: people connect to each other and share

(2)    Era of social functionality: social networks become like operating systems

(3)    Era of social colonization: Every experience can now be social

(4)    Era of social context: Personalized and accurate content

(5)    Era of social commerce: Communities define future products and services

I haven’t checked the English blogs but I’m sure theses areas have been thoroughly discussed and explained in many forums. I would like to point on the fact that whatever we do during these era is going to have more and more impact on the things we do in real life. And then I’m not talking about Dan doing his real twitter act, but more about organizations or persons bringing products of their digital social media back (or forth) to the worlds of those good old offline media. Lately, I was invited by someone out of my network who organized a small party for his LinkedIn contacts to meet each other. That’s interesting, because it hints at a need for one of the reasons people get connected: explore contact lists for your own good. The best (and maybe most fun) way to do that is by really meeting those contacts.

Another example I found in the publisher industry in The Netherlands, where one of the leading offline computer magazines, Computable, decided to change its core existence towards a complete online magazine. Articles are now primarily written for the internet, which gives readers the opportunity to read and react instantly. As a result the offline weekly magazine is now filled with online tried out and enriched articles and exists as a spin-off from the internet magazine.

 

A final example of bringing online social exchange further in the offline world is the initiative of the Upload Cinema. The reason to be is simple. It is fun to see and recommend Youtube films to your friends on social networks, but it is even more fun to see those movies with your friends in an offline surrounding: the cinema. You can only attend on invitation or when you contribute an interesting recommendation. To hear your friends laugh out loud about your recommendations sometimes provides a bolder sense of appreciation than the ‘lol’ abbreviation in your comments box can ever cause.

Comments

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