As I reflect back on all of the advancements, benchmarks, adoption and marked increase in overall adoption of social media in 2009; I want to share some forward looking thoughts on what 2010 will likely bring. Think about how these changes could impact your business (both positively & negatively) as you read this post

Social networks have forever changed user behaviors and expectations in ways that scare most brands. The power has forever shifted to the consumer. You can’t sit by the sidelines and wait for this “fad” to go away; because it is never going away. WAKE UP: You Have No Control!

The velocity of innovation, change and adoption of new technologies/platforms/eco-systems has never been faster. Metcalfe’s Law is in full effect via social networks. (Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system)

It seems like only yesterday (2.5 years ago) that facebook had ONLY 20 million users as they launched their f8 application platform. Facebook now has over 350 million users worldwide; the world wide adoption is mind numbing and unprecedented.

Twitter has busted out of its early adopter geeky user base and gone mainstream with well over 60 million users. As a communication platform it is unprecedented in its how people use it as a flexible channel for dissemination and consumption of content.

Photo sharing services are rapidly moving forward with lots of mobile adoption and social interactions across multiple social networks. This is fundamentally changing the types of information we share socially and the types of photos we take.

Mobile has finally arrived (been hearing it is the year of mobile since 2000) with the widespread adoption of smartphones like iPhone and Google android. The app environment is ever growing with over 100 K apps for iphones currently.

The earthquake disaster in Haiti has taught people around the world that they can effectively “text” money/donations that will show up on their bill. This is a huge deal in the education of the north american population of users to the possibilities of text & commerce. Most people had no idea you could do this until this terrible human tragedy occurred.

7 Social Media Visionary Thoughts for 2010

1. Asynchronous casual gaming will grow to over 300 million users worldwide with increasing penetration into the mobile space. (companies like Zynga)
2. Opportunities for brands to truly engage, listen and participate beyond simple customer service and sales will emerge. Consumers will expect more participation from your brand, not less.
3. The mobile smart phone app environment will emerge as a more valuable communication channel as social networks add increased mobile functionality for sharing, interaction and commerce.
4. Android will be in a close second place race with iPhone by years end. The opportunities here are enormous for smart socialized businesses that develop with consumers needs in mind.
5. Users social graphs will become increasingly portable and allow deeper and richer experiences with consumers on large brand and business sites.
6. Social networks will finally penetrate/mainstream the boomer and above age groups as their children pull them in to socialized sharing as a more normalized way of communicating and staying in touch across geographic separations.
7. Mobile geo specific platforms (gowalla, four square, yelp) will effect local commerce, marketing and communications as recommendation engines and channels for promotion. These types of services will become more integrated into a variety of 3rd party applications and experiences.

So what does all this mean??? It means you need to stay on top of these advances in technology and how they can positively impact your business if leveraged properly. Staying educated in an ongoing manner is what we aim to do at Gravity Summit by bring together the brightest minds in this rapidly changing social, marketing and branding space.

We hope to see you in person at our UCLA Gravity Summit 2-22-2010. Get your tickets now.

Cheers!

Rodney Rumford: Gravity Summit Founder @rumford