My Crystal Ball Says.....

Jim Tobin wrote an online article a year or so ago about the future of social media. He had 5 trends in mind about the social media future. #1 was that ratings would become an expectation. This would mean that shoppers will actually penalize sites that don’t have consumer rating systems installed by shopping elsewhere. I suppose this could be true, however I use sites that don't have a rating system in place.
#2 was that content aggregation would boom. Here he meant that more and more corporate types are going to figure out that they can benefit from investing in content aggregation. Companies are spending millions creating mediocre stuff with their name on it. For a fraction of that, they could aggregate the most important content in their field, provide a valuable service, and get tremendous brand equity.
#3 was that new tools will replace some of the first movers. Here he meant that sites like Twitter that had numerous start-up problems will either be improved dramatically or totally replaced by sites with no problems. Microblogging might become a better term for social media.
#4 was that social networks will become portable. It's hard to believe that we don't consider them portable now. People need to be able to move between social networks without 'befriending' anyone.
#5 was that virtual worlds will gain traction. Tobin didn't believe when he wrote this article that virtual worlds like Second Life would grow but they are expanding.
When Tobin ended his article, he said, " Which way is this bus heading? Either way, I’m enjoying the ride so far". I'm like Tobin....I'm enjoying what I'm learning...I'm certainly not an expert, not afraid to ask for help but I am enjoying the technology ride for sure.