Recently the head of Facebook Canada, Jordan Banks, talked to a packed room at a Toronto Board of Trade event about “How Businesses are Organizing Around People.” According to Banks, the essence of Facebook is that it’s a social graph, meaning you have a digital imprint of your connections. To know where we are going requires that we know where we are coming from. So, what's next for social media?
| Browse | Search | Discover |
| In the 1990s people browsed the Internet and clicked on links. | In the 2000s people had a pre-established intent and they searched for information on the Internet. | In the past five years people discovered their friends online and are influenced by them. |
Interesting Tidbits
- Facebook is the number one referral site for traffic.
- 1/3 of Facebook users access the website through a mobile device.
- Commerce is organizing around people. For instance, Ticketmaster tells people which concerts their friends are attending. Vitamin Water created flavours based on input from their fans on Facebook.
- Companies are closing the loop – offline (real world) to online to offline, or online to offline to online – with their customer interactions.
What's Next for Social Media? Art of Possibility
- Create content by what your friends like.
- Address problems by putting people in the middle.
What’s on the Horizon? What's next for Social Media?
Jordan Banks suggests that we look at technologies such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Tag), QR Codes (Quick Response Code), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and so on, and figure out how they apply to our lives. Banks did not really explain what he meant, but to further explore his idea requires an understanding of each of the technology. I have included diverse articles on the mentioned technologies to get you started on understanding how they work, and determine if there are ways for you to incorporate them into your life. It’s intended to get your creative juices flowing. Perhaps the future is closer than you think!
Whenever you want to get an understanding of something, good places to begin your research include:
Further Reading
How Does RFID Technology Work? [Technology Explained]
How RFID Works (YouTube Video)
How RFID Works: RFID Tags Past and Present
How Robots Work: Robots and Artificial Intelligence
10 Questions for Ray Kurzweil (Time Magazine article on AI)
Top 5 Ways Nature Has Inspired Technology: 5: Developing Artificial Intelligence
Are we 10 years away from artificial life?: Artificial Life Concerns and Challenges