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More and more people are using it. We often complain about it as a fundamental waste of our time or of how it trespasses our privacy, therefore, we can now officially pronounce Social Media as mainstream. Yes, it is part of our daily life, during the good and the bad times, and due to globalization as well as the increase in household internet connections, we start sharing the same experience worldwide. And yet, do we all use it the same way?
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ZackBrandit being located in Belgium, is in the center of a cultural crossroad. The country has 3 official languages as well as Germany, UK, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and France as neighbors - each one with its own language, communication and entrepreneurial culture. Belgium developed Netlog, The Netherlands brought Hyves and the others introduced their own set of social networks and other media.
When Brian Solis, a prominent new media thought leader, introduced the Social Media Prism, most of the brands that were included were from US based start-ups. In the meantime new prisms were created for other countries such as Germany, Japan and China while international start-ups were added to the original one.
In February 2010, Brian Solis wrote a blog post about
the state of social media around the world where he uses a study by TrendStream to explain that although Facebook dominates the market in most countries, social media usage can vary from one place to another.
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For a complete analysis I invite you to read Brian’s blogpost. What interests ZackBrandit the most is the evolution of the blogosphere. Projections of the research show us that in most western countries we mainly use social media to upload pictures and manage a social network profile. Only 10% of people who have internet access (average of 50% of the population) write their own blog. On the other hand, if we go to Asia or Latin America we notice that blogging has a predominant position; often much higher than social networking; yet, rates of internet access remains proportionally much lower (except for South Korea and Japan).
Most social media technologies originated in western countries; which also means they mature faster in western societies. Whereas Asian and Latin cultures, where life isn’t as fast-paced, show that online communication is also evolving at a slower speed.
At first glance this may not sound alarming, but we may expect a further decline of blogging in western countries and probably also in the rest of the world on the long run.
Larger and more influential social networks will start looking to expand beyond their virtual borders. It has already started with Facebook Connect, but with time we may anticipate much more interaction between the different existing platforms.
This also means that companies with a business model revolving around social shopping, affiliation and online marketing will start to see local and international shifts in their communication strategies. Thus, can we start talking about glocal online communication?
How does this influence ZackBrandit’s model?
Though we originally developed the Zilhouette and our affiliation model for bloggers, we value being active on different platforms. This of course demands a lot of energy; priorities must be established. When we decided to create ZackBrandit about 5 years ago, we expected to see Europe follow the US lead in social media. With time we realized that cultural and perceptional differences were telling us otherwise. This complexifies ZackBrandit’s model and its goal to push conversation forward.
So, where are we going to? What direction will social media take?
We can only guess, but we expect to see standards and interconnections popping-up.
Language remains a strong barrier; however automatic translation is also improving.
Server costs can be very expensive and partnerships to reduce them are also viable.
3D, virtual and augmented reality will become even more immersive. Today we connect to the internet; tomorrow the internet will connect with us.
Indeed, social media is still in its infancy…
