FreshNetworks Blog

There are many benefits to social media, but Jay Stevens from MySpace showed that in a US study 45% of users of social networks said that they “made life more exciting”. This comment shows one thing – that through social networks you can build deeper emotional connections with people. Deeper because social networks are not a substitute for real life, but they enhance it.

For Stevens, the real use of social networks is yet to come. He notes three trends that are major developments in this space:

1. Personalisation – from the BBC homepage to MySpace we’ve seen that ajax and widgets are making it easier for people to make their online experience personal. The critical next step for social networks is to find ways for one user to use the same network for multiple reasons – personal, work, dating. Essential for the success of this will be homepage personalisation – a good social network is one that each individual feels as though they own.
2. Portability – for Stevens this means both the ability to access content from multiple devices, but also to add content any time any place. The ‘post’ functionality of MySpace and ‘share’ for Facebook are starting to make this possible.
3. Collaboration – the future is going to be open APIs and developer applications. Something that Facebook is leading the way in at the moment.