Almost three years ago, when I first started my research on using blogs in teaching, I was very surprised to find that while writing on their blogs in class, the students often chatted quietly about their work. They were short exchanges, mostly about s…

The key to the future of social media is ensuring that as new sites and services develop that we find ways to migrate with our networks from one to the other, and find ways to manage having multiple accounts on multiple networks, effective use of api's and services like ping.fm that allow you to send status updates across mulple networks all help.

Another thing that is currently changing in social media is who we connect with. With sites like facebook, you probably knew all your friends on facebook in the real world before friending them on facebook, however with the rise of services like twitter all that changes and while you will have met some of your followers in the real world, many of them will be people you have never met before, so you've switched from managing your social network to growing it.

I agree that I am a 'serial offender' but my thoughts are:
- If something is useful, then we'll carry on using it (think e-mail, blogging)
- If other people are using it, then that's where we'll keep going (think how many people are using Facebook)
- If the tool provides something that addresses an unmet need, people will use it
- If it is an open platform or has an API so that others can use it to innovate, it'll likely be popular

I think Social Media is here to stay, but it will develop based on constructive feedback and solid use cases.

See you soon

Justin

The inovator such as your good self, will see a new technology, see its potential, get really excited about it and write all sorts of great stuff about it, the press will pick up on eventually, but by the time it hits the masses, you will have become bored and moved onto the next big thing. That is not to say that the masses arn't by this stage as excited as you once were, and that it won't get really big before eventually dying.

There is also the lure of the new, in some ways social networks are a little addictive, people often want to have more friends than their friends, and be one of the cool kids using the latest social gadget, but eventually people get bored and move on to the next big thing, just look at the shift from friend reunited to myspace to facebook and possibly on to twitter. These sites are often, but not always more about the bells and whistles and less about the content.

Having said that there are other social media sites that are just great at what they do and that are much more likely to be in it for the long term, where they are not so trend based, flickr, youtube or delicious are all pretty good examples. They do one thing, they do it simply, they allow you to share the contend with other social sites.

I have to admit i am probably a serial offender in that i sign up for every new technology that comes along, some of which i really big up, before getting bored of and ultimately abandoning.

What will be interesting to see is how long companies that started building facebook, myspace and twitter communities continue to support them or whether they can implement graceful exit stratergies or whether they'll face a consumer backlash.