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I’m not taking much of your time today, I just wanted to offer up a prediction.
This whole social media thing has been around for a while, now.
When industries move past their initial honeymoon growth period, when everyone is thriving, they enter the market maturity period. That’s when things get a little crowded. If you’re talking tangible products, more and more people are producing the product, but competing for a stagnant number of customers and money. After all, the consumer only has a limited number of resources (cash money), so they have to pick carefully who they purchase from.
With social media, there’s plenty of people doing the same thing. You have MySpace, Facebook, FriendFeed etc. You have bit.ly, ow.ly, etc. You have YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc. It’s getting to be a crowded market. More and more tools are popping up daily, but we’re getting to the point where the number of new social media users is growing slower, it’s flattening out. In this scenario, the limited resource becomes time, since users can only feasibly use a certain number of tools.
So, what happens now?
Look at the financial industry. They consolidated. Smaller banks got bought by bigger banks, giving the bigger players a little more room to move around. There are other examples, but you get the point.
Facebook already gave us a glimpse of this when they purchased Friendfeed. In 2010, I’d expect to see some more big mergers and acquisitions that will make headlines. What if Twitter purchased something like bit.ly, which would easily remove any doubt that it was the biggest player in URL shorteners?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not time for consolidation but simply finding a way to make all of these tools play with each other nicely, making controlling an account on multiple tools easier.
I sure hope so, anyways, because I keep finding more areas in social media that I want to spend time playing in, and my days aren’t getting any longer.
What are some predictions you have for social media in 2010?
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Comments
12.04.09
I definitely hear you on this point. I am actually quite overwhelmed by the existing content sometimes in the social media universe. Maybe it will be time to merge, but one of the great things I find about the market now is that the "little people" in programming still get a shot to compete with the big boys. I just wouldn't want Facebook buying up everything.
Great ideas!
12.05.09
Great point, Beth, it is very easy for anyone who has a great idea to put it out there for everyone to use. Unfortunately, unless they've found a way to monetize it, it's probably tough for them to consistently update and maintain it. I'm definitely not a developer, so that's all just what I'd imagine. Hopefully, if there is consolidation, it won't keep these developers from doing what they're doing now.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
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