MarketingProfs

I covered my five highlights from 2009 earlier in this space, and am following with my top social media predictions for 2010.
First, my overall prediction: in 2010, we’ll officially leave behind the era of faith-based social media (words like gurus and followers will lose their currency) and will enter the era of getting things done with social media.

Here are my top five:
1. No more free ride, the Facebook edition
Facebook has more members than the United States has people, and it owns an increasing percentage of our time and our data. In exchange, Facebook gives back little insight into what they actually know about us. They tell us almost nothing about what data they are capturing and keeping, and what conclusions they are drawing. And they give us surprisingly little say when they optimize their business model by compromising our privacy. 2010 will be the year of increased scrutiny for Facebook. I’m not talking about the Feds (though the FTC is watching), but market pressure. Look for competitive social networks to experiment with more privacy-conscious models, and more user pressure (we will spend less time if we lose trust in Facebook’s stewardship of our online selves) to keep Facebook honest.
2. No more free ride, the content and applications edition.
Content has been under siege for a long time, and in 2010 content will start winning. A small but important minority of media companies will begin to figure out how to successfully charge for content, and we’ll all be the better for it. People accept the notion that content wants to be free as if it’s a natural law. Rubbish! 2010 will be the year that content wants to be good. And good content will get rewarded. The Wall Street Journal and the Economist are showing us the way, and they will have plenty of company in the year ahead.
On the application side, we should be prepared for the gravy train to end. This morning. I did a cross-country video call on Skype, read part of the New York Times on my iPhone, and opened up a DropBox account (which gives me 2 GBs of my own personal storage in the cloud)?all for free. This has to end. There is no sustainable business model in this, and we’ll all find ourselves having to pay our way more often in 2010.
3. Google vs. Facebook
Facebook was the Number One Web destination on Christmas Day, which I’m sure caused a bit of a stir at the GooglePlex. In response, look for search to become more realtime, while our Facebook data becomes more visible as Facebook and Google jockey for dominance. This battle will get very loud and more than a little ugly in the year ahead. And an if-you-can’t beat-them-buy-them side prediction: Microsoft or Google will tender a serious offer to acquire Facebook in 2010.
4. Terrorism goes social
I hate to explore the dark side, but I predict that a major use of social networks by terrorists will be uncovered in 2010. John Robb makes the point in his chilling book Brave New War that the tools and platforms that are changing our lives for good are equally accessible to people who wish us ill. Al Qaeda is already an astute user of social video. Does anyone really think they are not using Facebook and Twitter?
5. The year of the Chinese social network
We talk about Facebook’s China strategy, but what about QZone’s American strategy? The Chinese social network QZone is by some counts (though the data is a mess) larger than Facebook. They are more innovative about monetizing traffic. It is not far-fetched to imagine QZone launching a play in the U.S. And you can bet you’d be reading a flood of articles and blog posts imploring you to open your QZone accounts. There are 112 million Chinese who manage an active social profile, vs. under 60 million Americans. At some point, we may well be taking our social networking cues from Shanghai, not Silicon Valley.
It is always hard to stick to five. I left out a bunch, and I’m sure you have plenty that didn’t make my list. I’d love to hear your comments, or let me know on Twitter @motoole1.

Tags: 2010, Social Media