If you thought Social Networking was big in 2009, you should have seen it 2010. Last year, Social Networking/Social Media was plain vanilla Bruce Wayne(in a manner of speaking), this year it became Batman – gadgets et al and went mainstream. Social Media dominated dinner table conversations – and I’m talking about tech non-savvy 30+ year olds. Chintoo, Mintoo, the family elders, Mom and even the Post Office all got on to Facebook. Idiots..er people even washed their dirty linen over Social Media.
But on a slightly more serious note. 2010 was an extremely eventful year for Social Networking. It did everything from fighting crime to recovering money to organizing protests. Twitter shone, Facebook shone even more while Google toiled away with little success. Facebook started with the year with 350 million users and ended it well on its way to 600 million. Twitter after touching 50Million Tweets per day early in year had notched up an impressive 106 million users by the end of the year. Google looked to start the year strongly with Buzz. But in no time it was riddled with privacy suits and gradually lost its Buzz. While it wasn’t deadpooled like Google Wave was, it forced Google to rethink its Social Strategy. Rumours about Google Me started doing the rounds, this was eventually rechristened Google +1. Orkut, which Google has always treated like a step child was overtaken by Facebook in India, leaving Brazil as its last bastion.
But it wasn’t the surge in users alone that resulted in it being a good year for social networking. There were several sub plots to this story too. Mobile Internet, Social Gaming, Location Based services, Social Media Marketing all played very important parts in the larger scheme of things. There were negatives too, with privacy concerns being played out all over the world.
Perhaps the biggest development of the year, was the attempt from sites like Facebook made to expand their clout outside their social network. Facebook’s Like button became ubiquitous and thanks to it we saw countless Do You Like This kind of puns peppering posts about the social networking giant. Instant personalization sought to create a personalized web for users and Facebook found many partners. The social graph was the most discussed and sought after commodity on the internet, and it is unfortunately the monopoly of a few powerful social networks.
It grew leaps and bounds in the enterprise space too, with several companies adopting enterprise social networks like Yammer to capture ideas from internal discussions. Plenty of interesting Indian Enterprise social networks are in the works too. On the flipside, many Indian companies took note of social media usage amongst their employees and issues guidelines. LinkedIn sealed its position as The professional social network but had to add new features to ensure that users were engaged.
The year began with a fair amount of negative press for social media, whether it was ‘Anti-Social Media‘ or the dismal engagement that some leading IT companies saw in their Social Media Initiatives. But there were several encouraging signs with reports suggesting some users were spending upto 6 hours a day on social networking sites. Not to mention the helping hand it played during the Haiti Earthquake.
Social gaming hit India, both online with Zapak launching its games on Facebook, ibibo’s own games and offline with Zynga opening an office in Bangalore. Facebook followed suit with a Hyderabad office. It was particularly good year for Zynga as it launched game after game and recreated the Farmville’s success. The long term partnership with Facebook, and Google’s rumoured investment which neither company has confirmed foretell big things to come. Its latest offering, CityVille has already surpassed Farmville’s popularity – without spamming our NewsFeed.
But Social Networking had a new Toy this year, that became very famous - Location. Though the concept had been around for a couple of years, it was in 2010 that it started attracting mainstream attention. While its adoption rate is not high enough to justify ALL the hype, the advantages it offers are quite apparent, giving companies/businesses the ability to target potential customers like never before. Foursquare was leading the charge with the Checkin Game, but Facebook got into the act as well. Sadly, India was kept waiting again.
The other fascinating development this year was Social Networking’s ability to drive commerce. It was just a logical extension of the ‘Word of Mouth’ concept in the real world but more potentially a lot more powerful. Facebook jumped into the fray with Facebook Credits, but the real drive came from the plethora of Groupon clones whose growth was accelerated and magnified by the social graph.
It also gave old school advertisers a new lease of life – in some ways. Traditionally advertising campaigns were always targeted at a certain demographic, however with Google’s adwords the paradigm shifted a little. Internet campaigns went from targeting users themselves, to their immediate actions. But Social Networks, and I mean Facebook, changed that again. Allowing advertisers once again to target users for who they were(behaviorally of course). As a result Facebook dominated display ads. Twitter too got into the action, with experimental In-Stream ads on Hootsuite that were targeted based on who the users followed.
You cannot talk about advertising without bringing up privacy concerns. There were plenty of those throughout the year. Especially with the increased popularity of location sharing. People were urged not to share their vacation details on social networking sites. Pleaserobme came up to highlight this problem. Facebook as always faced extra criticism when it overhauled its privacy policies(again). Identity Theft and Cyberbullying were major concerns, and developers leaking information didn’t make matters any better. Social Media sites were also banned several times in countries like Pakistan, Turkey etc.
There was more negativity surrounding Facebook, with Quit Facebook Day being declared on May 31st. And Malcom Gladwell sought to add a pinch of salt to Social Networking Frenzy. People were concerned about Facebook’s ownership of their data and open source alternatives like Diaspora popped up.
Home grown networks like SMSGupShup and RockeTalk did well too, but India’s biggest #win with regard to social networking this year was how it forced the mainstream media to give due attention to the Radia Tapes controversy. Indian TV channels took to Social Networking to complement their TV shows in a big way. Movies like My Name is Khan streamed its premiere in partnership with Facebook and ustream. Even the IPL this year was streamed on YouTube albeit with a small time lag. Lalit ‘Mr. IPL’ Modi chose YouTube over TV channels for his Tell-all interview.
Overall, even though there were plenty of negatives, it was a great year for social networking. Thanks to astronomical valuations and revenue projections, social networking has proved that isn’t a flash in the pan and it is here to stay.
