Jeremiah Owyang Reflects Upon The Future of Social Networking Technology …
Posted Tuesday, July 28th, 2009, By: Michael
For the past few years I’ve been using Google Reader to keep tabs on my favorite social media bloggers.
When I heard Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research, Inc. was heading to Portland as a keynote speaker for the 2009 Internet Strategy Forum I leapt at the chance to meet him. I’ve been following his blog for about a year and a half and find that he continually produces original and creative thought on a subject inundated with ‘experts.’
On July 22nd the Social Media Club PDX hosted a summer social on the rooftop of the WebTrends building featuring a Q&A with Jeremiah. I was pleasantly surprised to learn many people there were from creative and communications departments ranging from companies such as iContact to Intel.
Jeremiah gave a brief overview of who was doing what in the world of social media technology and answered questions that had been submitted prior to the meet-up. While he didn’t have time to go into too much detail, he reiterated some important points related to adopting social media technologies.
For those trying to determine whether or not to use a certain social media technology, Jeremiah referred people to the POST methodology as created by Forrester Research, Inc. He gave us examples of companies who are using social technology well (Intercontinental Hotel Group, Zappos, Best Buy) and directed our attention to Yahoo!, which is currently in the process of turning their homepage into an aggregate of many existing social networking technologies.
It was refreshing to hear someone speak about social media with a sense of humor. When answering a question about the online behavior of Americans, he said, “Oh, do you mean U.S. Americans?” (a reference to Miss South Carolina Teen USA)
He ended the meeting with a caution to those businesses looking to utilize social media technologies in other cultures. He said every culture is different, and every culture uses social networking technology differently. For example, he explained how mobile phones and mobile social networking technologies are big in Japan. He cited a recent study claiming Japanese people use the phone to talk for only 4% of the time, and the average person has two phones.
At this point someone lobbed a softball question.
“Why do they have two?”
“I don’t know,” reflected Jeremiah. “One for the girlfriend and one for the wife …”
The audience erupted into laughter and groans, but all jokes aside his message was pretty clear. While social media websites like Facebook have 250 million users, not all of them are active users. Email continues to be the biggest social networking technology, and most of the A-list bloggers use it as their primary mode for communication. Additionally, mobile applications are becoming increasingly popular and inching towards a junction where they may eclipse desktop applications in popularity.
And finally, he claimed the aggregation of existing social networking technologies will be a key trend for 2010.
If you want to tell your friends you were there first, I recommend checking out these sites:
