SA is looking forward to an exciting 2011, as social media becomes the norm for businesses and consumers alike.
This is according to Ryan Silberman, chief operating officer of Popimedia, who notes that consumers are spending more time and effort to take their lives onto these platforms, while businesses are taking the plunge, as they start to understand social media marketing possibilities.
“We believe that the rapid pace of technology innovation is feeding the social media frenzy and it is becoming easier for people to have real-time conversations with their networks on any platform,” he says.
Silberman is also of the view that television will also make a strong play locally this year as the country starts to integrate TVs, computers and mobile phones.
He points out that Skype already comes installed on various TVs with Apple, Google and various independent companies offering a 'connected' TV experience, which brings not only streaming video content to TVs, but a whole host of applications which allow access to weather, news and connect with social networks.
“This, in turn, will allow us to 'like' our favourite movies or leave comments on what we are busy watching. Obviously, this will depend on your Internet connection speed and only the luckiest few will have access to these services in South Africa,” he says.
With TVs, mobile and PC now connected, explains Silberman, we should see video calls begin to flourish across platforms and devices.
“Up until recently, only platform-to-platform and device-to-device video conferencing has been possible and even then both users had to use the same set-up.
“So what you will now be able to do is for example: while trying on a new pair of jeans, is call your friend/s on their mobile, TV or laptop and get their opinion on the spot,” he explains.
According to Silberman, Facebook is still SA's social media platform of choice and there are many innovations planned for 2011.
With 250 million people accessing Facebook Connect through third party sites, the time is now rife for Facebook to offer third party sites a tool to serve Facebook ads outside of Facebook, he reckons.
“This would effectively one-up Google's offering as the same sort of targeting that is available on Facebook would now become available to any site using Facebook Connect.
“These and other existing applications combined with the fact that South African businesses have been interacting with Facebook and growing communities for the last few years, has made the management of your Facebook page vitally important.”
In summary, states Silberman, what we are seeing is that innovation and technology has a snowball effect on how we interact and communicate with our friends and brands and that social media will have an ever-increasing role in our lives.
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