Warning: this is going to be a very long post, a response to two great posts about the future of social media and the social web from Alexander van Elsas and Colin Walker from the week of May 19, 2008. I’m placing the More tag here because, frankly, it’s going to be a lot to wade through and I don’t want to force people to read through it. I hope Alexander and Colin do, however. And, for that matter, I hope you do as well!

On May 21 Alexander wrote a post entitled, “In the next evolution of the web public interaction will be less important” in which he argues that the current compliment of teens and 20-something people who grew up in the age of Web 2.0 will have very different wants and needs when it comes to online communication, networking, and other information sharing. This newer generation (which I don’t belong to, I’m Generation X) will be more concerned about privacy and less likely to maintain a public presence on the Web. They will be interested in networking with relatively small groups of people. He also makes the interesting suggestion that this newer generation will not use something as common as E-Mail – at least common to my generation.

And then Colin Walker suggested that with the continuing evolution of the social web, our current social media functionality will continue onward while newer stuff like Alexander describes will flourish in parallel.

I’m oversimplifying, but those are the essence of the two points of view.

So, what can I possibly add to this discussion, especially since Colin’s approach essentially accommodates the two main possibilities?

Comments about Alexander’s post:

E-Mail: I must admit that I’m dumbfounded by the suggestion that today’s younger people wouldn’t be familiar with E-Mail or would shun it, presumably in favor of mobile phones and text messages. I guess I can understand that it would have less relevance now, especially when a mobile telephone number basically serves the same purpose as an E-Mail address. However, I think this theory starts to fall apart when these younger people have to interact with institutions, businesses, and government. These organizations have deeply engrained E-Mail cultures and I don’t see that disappearing anytime soon. Exposure to E-Mail is virtually unavoidable. I would be interested to see what percentage of younger people use text messaging so frequently.

Privacy: Alexander suggests that today’s high school and university age kids are more concerned about privacy and thus won’t want to participate in public forums like Twitter, FriendFeed, and other aspects of social media.
As I see it, privacy has three aspects, not unlike Fate herselves:

Biographical or personal data privacy

I think many of us of any generation want to keep our personal data private and some of us more so than others. For example, I don’t think I’d ever publish my street address or personal telephone number in social media. I’m also loathe to mention too many details about my family for similar reasons. When I contrast that to some of the personal information that I see people share on Facebook, this makes less sense to me.

Content exclusivity

Again, I may be dwelling too much on the example of Facebook, but younger people don’t seem to have many qualms about sharing photos and videos, some of which are personal (and some which probably should be private.) They may not be inclined to publish articles online or participate in online discussions, as a general observation, but there will always be exceptions. And, to be honest, how many people from other generations put their creations out for public scrutiny?

Conversation exclusivity

This is really a subset of content exclusivity, but focuses specifically on blog/forum comments or other similar group interactions. Some people may be more comfortable making comments or having online discussions than creating and publishing their own content. I’m thinking about the people who comment on Digg stories, as an example.

Personal branding via content creation

There’s no doubt that many of us in social media are engaged in some form of personal branding exercise, either overtly or just by the nature of being involved in social media (and I’m no exception!)

“This ability to become a public figure has also fueled the idea that we can all become our own personal brand….but most of (this younger generation) aren’t building a personal brand, they aren’t part of every public conversation.”

Alexander’s right about this, but also a bit wrong. True, most of the people who are active in social media and who are branding happily along are not students, but professionals or otherwise active in the workforce. Personal branding is a big part of career mobility and advancement – that’s one of the most difficult lessons that I’ve learned in my 17 years in the workforce. The Web allows us ways to extend our personal branding activities to a larger audience.

People in entry level or junior positions are generally busier with acquiring the technical knowledge and expertise with their chosen careers to work much on personal branding. Later, if they decide to explore leadership roles within organizations, their focus may change. In fact, it will probably have to change. Public social media interaction will become more attractive at a different stage of life.

Small group interaction online

I do think there will be a growing market for the kind of small, intimate group interaction that Alexander describes… but the tools are already here in some form. Facebook is not a good example of this, nor MySpace, due to the “walled garden” approach of data storage – it won’t encourage more private, personal interactions. Ning groups are probably a step in the right direction.

Let me describe a theoretical example of the type of application that I think Alexander might be talking about. Let’s say that a group of young people are planning a vacation trip to a foreign country. They might want to have private discussion groups to plan the event and talk about it. They might want to have a Wiki-like resource to provide reference information about the trip. They might want to have a joint file-sharing site to house pictures, audio, and video related to the trip. They might want to have dedicated microblogging and instant messaging about the trip as it occurs. And, finally, they would want to have the ability to keep all of this information exclusive to their group - forever.

Yes, people would find this kind of functionality very cool and would probably use it. They can likely cobble together the required functionality through existing applications. However, if they wanted to do this for free, they’d likely have to divulge some personal information in order to be able to use the websites in question AND it’s likely they’d have to put up with advertising within the applications, plus E-Mail spam from advertisers. Would they pay to use this kind of service? (perhaps if it was part of an overall vacation package? There’s a possible business model – piggyback the service onto another value proposition, i.e. travel or vacation packages for groups.)

Well, that’s the million dollar/euro/pound question, isn’t it?

I still have a problem with accepting all of Alexander’s assumptions, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong – I just don’t have the mental model to encompass them.

Colin’s thoughts on the evolution of the social web

Since Colin accommodates both the public and private social webs, I really can’t argue against his models. I think the current public social web could certainly co-exist with the private social web that Alexander describes. I also agree that there may likely be cross-over of group memberships and conversations.

I don’t foresee the likely creation of the multi-level conversations that he describes, shifting from public to private then back to public. For one thing, I don’t think that the needed mechanisms would exist outside of large organizations like business, academia or government. Still, necessity is the motherhood of invention, so where there’s a will, I’m sure there’d be a way.

However, I don’t see where the motivation will come from to build these conversational mechanism. This would have the effect of decentralizing power, influence, and control to wider groups. I can see great applications in the realms of both commerce and government, but it would be at odds with the types of personalities and people that permeate the world’s power circles.

But it might be a beautiful thing, too. :)

Winding up

This subject matter probably warrants a lengthy essay, report, or white paper to discuss properly. I think that both Alexander and Colin have demonstrated some great thinking in their posts and, at best, all I’ve done is poke a few small holes in their sails which won’t stop their boats by any stretch of the imagination.

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