Well, another year over and only 2 more to go until we all die in the 2012 earth ending apocalyptic collisions between one fictitious rogue planet that someone haphazardly associated with a Sumarian creation myth and an ancient Mayan calendar, which like all calendars happens to have a beginning and end.  So let’s just worry about that later and focus on social media in the coming year shall we. Here are some predictions for how social media will grow and develop through 2010, a collection of my own ideas and some that I’ve remorselessly ripped off from others.

In 2010:

Social media will grow fastest in India and other economically booming parts of south east Asia, much faster than Europe or North America. Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) has openly expressed that he feels my opinion on this matter is astute and correct by agreeing with me. Though he didn’t state it was with me exactly per se, we share the similar view that with one of the fastest growing economies on earth and with an robust entertainment and media culture India looks ripe for social media explosion. So really he agrees with me by virtue of the fact that we hold the same opinion.

Race, culture, and lifestyle-specific social media platforms will begin to fragment the overall user base into unique services. The idea of Racial social media presents a bit of a moral conundrum but yet we’ve seen income stratification over platforms and that hasn’t caused any eyebrows to be raised in righteous indignation. The fact that social media will be growing most in India and China is what drives this prediction.

Social media will level off among higher income Westerners while it will increase among lower incomes. This is a natural law of economics, there are diminishing returns for any good once it has reached a certain threshold. The main “consumers” of social media platforms thus far have been the middle to upper class and the ratardedly wealthy of the world. If tech gurus like Alec Ross and others are able to come through with their hopes of narrowing the digital divide between rich and poor, the lower incomes will be the next large growth sector of social media.

Elitism will rule social media. Because poor uneducated ignorant buck toothed hillbillies will be flooding social media platforms like a deluge of garbage consuming zombies the ivy league veterans of social media will retreat into elitist cyber-enclaves where their status and anything they post will only be viewable to their rich and cultured friends.

The social media using public will undergo a self reflexive behavioral adjustment in 2010. After a barrage of embarrassing and job losing tweets and facebook statuses widely reported over the past two or three years, we will begin to live our social media lives like our mom is reading every tweet and facebook update. Self reflexivity is a sociological term in which either we begin to self-censor our behavior and speech because of and innate sense that our actions are being observed or we are aware of the process of socialization and the costs of our being out of step with norms.  Crap, do I have to explain norms now? That one seems pretty obvious.  You know, like in Cheers “Norms!”

Related posts:

1. 2010 Social Media will be all about augmented reality, bloody revolutions and corporate profiteering- weeeeee
2. The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows?
3. Facebook, Freud and Marx: Social stratification and profit in social media

Tags: 2012 earth ending, Alec Ross, ancient Mayan calendar, digital divide, fastest growing economies, income stratification, India, Jimmy Wales, job losing tweets and facebook statuses, middle to upper class, Racial social media, retardedly wealthy, self reflexive, someone, widely reported

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