Social networks take the decade

Social networking is the trend of the year and the decade, according to panellists at a Business Bites ThinkTank discussion yesterday.

They highlighted social networking as a broad area to watch, among other prominent IT innovations for this year.

“This is the year of touch-screens, tablets, cloud computing, and more and more Twitter and Facebook,” said editor of Stuff MagazineToby Shapshak.

Co-founder of social media company Cerebra Mike Stopforth said the network effect has infiltrated users' lives on so many levels.

“What you gain in immediacy and convenience since news comes to you now and is relevant to you because of who you choose to follow, you risk in misinformation,” said former Google Africa CEO Stafford Masie.

However, he added that it's an 80/20 situation in favour of valuable information.

“There is now a greater sense of responsibility about what people are saying, because they know they have a larger audience.”

“Companies that are not on social networks are slowly committing suicide,” said Aki Anastasiou, of Talk Radio 702.

He said the audience is now part of a news team and the nature of broadcasting has changed from talking to an audience to interacting with them.

However, he also cited an academic quote as saying that Twitter and Facebook don't connect people, but rather isolate them from reality.

“Social networking makes us less human. We lose that personal communication and interaction. It's a dangerous situation. Future kids won't be able to communicate with other humans the way we do.

“Kids are becoming less human. They are anti-social with mobile phones always in their hands.”

Masie disagreed, saying there's always a downside, but the positive is greater in this situation. “We've never before been able to harness the consumer the way we can now.”

Stopforth also said every time a new technology is introduced, people get paranoid about becoming less human but they adapt and evolve.

“You can't blame the technology. Technology is not stupid, people are stupid,” said Shapshak.

He added that every generation of technology comes with the blame for something. Radio was a threat to the music industry, the Internet brought phishing scams, and MXit carries the blame for sexual predators, said Shapshak. “It's not MXit. It's humanity's evil nature that's going to use any means to perpetuate it.”

Masie said users have to be careful with the effects of social networks. “People will lose presidential campaigns tomorrow because of what they say on Twitter today.”

He added that data wants to be free. “If everything was private, your Internet experience would suck. Do you want to be private, or do you want your user experience to be better?”

Masie said the architecture of participation is one of the greatest challenges facing organisations right now in terms of creating platforms. He explained that participatory nature is where users don't just elect but participate themselves.

“Normally, people have a vending machine expectation of government, but now people can create apps for municipalities. It's where citizens are writing this stuff and it's not just the government. This is an area to watch.”

Masie added that due to this participatory architecture the cloud is becoming dumb. “It's just this empty platform and innovation is happening on the edges. Architecturally, we're going through another renaissance.”

He explained that users no longer have to go to Web sites to find information and news that is relevant to them. It now all goes to them because of downloads and feeds.

Touch-screen devices are pointing to the future of computing environments, according to World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.

“Our moment in history happened last year with the popularisation of the touch-screen,” said Shapshak.

He said the interface is so simple and has become such an easy thing to do that it has made everything seem so possible.

Shapshak also said the cloud is part of what made the smartphone so popular, since users no longer have to have all their data stored on their devices.

However, Goldstuck said the frontier of technology is to get over the battery issue. “There will be simplicity in all areas of technology in the future. Gadgets are going to become less complex in terms of wiring but more complex in terms of what they can do.”

Anastasiou said this is the reason for the death of the desktop computer.

“The most fascinating thing I'm seeing happen is the mobile platform. The fastest PC three years ago is now a mobile phone. Three years from now the desktop is dead.”

He added that the question is if the networks will be able to handle the traffic and for this reason they need to be re-engineered.

“We're going to see mobile getting bigger and smartphone prices will drop. We'll see a society that's more connected and all the social networks getting even bigger.”

The panellists also highlight other technology trends that will become evident over the year.

Anastasiou said 3D television will be a game changer once more content becomes available and once producers get around the catch of having to wear the 3D glasses.

He also said the decade that's starting now is going to be a significant one for retail since consumers will no longer have to go to malls, even to buy clothes.

Masie predicted the return of hardware and the possibility of banks becoming redundant. “There may be cases where you can bump phones together and currency will transfer from one to the other. Hardware is coming back into play.”