Gone are the days when online was isolated and lonely. Today we are witnessing the opposite, thanks to Social Media
A new online ethos and available technology is driving people to connect online and then meet up with others, in the real world. This new trend is begging to be turned into new services for your customers.
As predicted by the futurists over a decade ago, hundreds of millions of people are now living a major part of their lives online, and enjoying the experience!
However, this has not turned an entire generation in to house-bound, anti-social animals: Instead social media and mobile communications is fuelling a new generation of face-to-face meetings and group interactions that defies every cliché about diminished human interaction in our ‘online/digital era’.
So please forget a future in which consumers lose themselves in a virtual world where children never see daylight, instead expect people to meet up in the future like they never did in the past.
Thanks to social media and online evolution, many of millions of people are now searching for, finding, connecting and staying in touch with likeminded people in the virtual world, with regular updates and mobile access now bringing an explosion of networking, socialising and meet-up’s in the real world.
People have a biological need to connect and be social
Thanks to new technology online Social Media feeds the existing, fundamental human need to interact with other people which goes far beyond enjoying one another’s company, or being emotionally dependent on other people.
So, no surprise then that hundreds of millions of people are now adding and farming socialised business and personal profiles making it really easy to discover, or stay in touch with, likeminded peers.
Think friends and family, colleagues, romantic interests, and those sharing similar working lives, out of work interests, political persuasions and causes. And all this ‘befriending’ takes place in bewildering numbers.
Never before have people been able to build and maintain such extensive and relevant personal networks and this will only accelerate in the future.
Interesting Social Media Stats from PewInternet:
Twitter: 100 million+ users, with 50 million tweets sent each day.
Facebook : nearing 500 million users. The average user has 130 friends, spends 55 minutes a day on the site and receives three “event invitations” to real-life gatherings every month (in December 2009, the company stated that 3.5 million events were created every month). Next? According to The New York Times, Facebook will soon incorporate ‘location’ in two ways: its own features for sharing location and APIs to let other sites and apps offer location services to Facebook users. This could well be a MASS MINGLING killer app.
LinkedIn : over 65 million members. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second.
A ‘veteran’ MASS MINGLING engine like Meetup has 6.1 million members, handling 2.2 million RSVPs and 180,000 meet-ups, in 45,000 cities a month.
Foursquare has one million users, while Gowalla: 150,000 users.
Nearly three quarters (73%) of online teens and an equal number (72%) of young adults* use social network sites. 73% of adult profile owners use Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% use LinkedIn. (Source: Pew, Feb 2010.)
There are countless millions of personal web pages, rss feeds, status updates, tweets, profiles, blogs and mashups:
Thanks to fast broadband and mobile connections young people will stay linked possibly for the rest of their lives via their blogs and other social media integrations which will leave life-long Google imprints that will make it easier to find them.
Whilst the rise of the online world has resulted in an orgy of real world activities that are all about connecting and meeting, from cultural events, business interests and seminars, even concerts to a global bar audience to a retail renaissance, to tourism & travel now being one of the world’s largest industries, employing over 220 million people and generating over 9% of global GDP.
New Online era and a new way of doing business
In short, people have always and will for a long time to come enjoy interacting with other people so today and more so in the future, there is no online, there is no offline there are just connections via technology, leading to connections in person.
For business the message is clear – Does your website allow you to be social?
About Mick Say
