What's Next for the Social Web?
As part of Social Media Week, Ning, a social website creation platform, hosted a panel (moderated by Mashable’s Ben Parr) around the “The Future of the Social Web", which I attended along with colleagues Andrea Hawley and Allison Van Nest. It was an interesting discussion, with a bit of debate but most of the panel and attendees were in agreement about two “areas to watch” – Facebook as a tool for news dissemination and how businesses can better interact with the customer base they have already built across various platforms.
Facebook: Actual news in your news feed?
Think about recent events – if you weren’t near a TV (a situation I found myself in) where is the first place you heard that Mubarak was stepping down? “Go Egypt!” and posts of a similar refrain began to populate my news feed as I sat on the bus, commuting in to work. Apart from helping to organize the mass protests, Facebook played a key role in spreading the news of what was going on.
How we receive news is definitely changing, and it will be interesting to see how traditional news outlets adapt to the latest shift.
Business and the Social Web
One way news outlets and their corporate counterparts may evolve is through the training and empowering of employees and third-party advocates to comment and interact on behalf of the company. CNN already does this in some ways with its iReports, but other businesses are jumping on the bandwagon as well. I read two interesting articles this morning, which highlight the potential benefits and pitfalls of ceding social control. The first looks at a rogue tweet from the Red Cross, the second profiles a Starbucks evangelist.
While increasing social presence is necessary to “stay in the conversation” you have to wonder how this can and will be rolled out and how much regulation companies will need to wield over their employees. It will be interesting to see what industries embrace this new frontier and how successful they are.
Looking Ahead
What do you think is next for the social web – are we going to turn to our Facebook profile for news? How much of a voice should employees be given on behalf of their brand?
Posted by Miranda Coykendall on February 16, 2011 at 5:44 PM
