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!”

Yes cell phones are still overwhelmingly used to avoid learning, but this new mobile phone software  is exciting for anyone with children who have learning disabilities- or if you yourself have one. Assistive technologies have been used in PCs and laptops with success for years, new software developments have now brought them to cell phones. Iansyst, a UK company that has been a leader in assistive technology develpment since the early 80s, created the software program CapturaTalk and are releasing a new version of it soon. The mobile phone software converts text to speech from a digital photo taken on the phone. Great for dyslexics, or for other learners with difficulties.  And it frees up students who can now use the technology anywhere, not having to be confined to a classroom or lab.  Having fully indexed the the Concise Oxford English Dictionary the software enables students to read something on the phone while having it highlight the words as they  are  reading them, reinforcing word recognition.

Cell phones are also being increasingly used outside of North America and Europe for education and much more. They’ve become an economic engine of growth for small businesses in Africa. Africa has in fact been the fastest growing market for cell phone use in the world for several years running. They’ve also been adopted as an educational tool in India as well as in Africa and combined with rising broad band internet connectivity in the regions, constitute the ingredients for massive transformations of rural areas that will see exponential gains in productivity and quality of life from better education and access to funds.

This is at least the hope of economist Jeffrey Sachs who believes that development assistance to Africa should be drastically increased and who believes that narrowing the digital divide will help to facilitate this aid and development in general; particularly in Africa. Having connectivity and mobile access to digital collections of learning tools and libraries will revolutionize the African educational system it is believed. With increasing connectivity and increasing cell use Africa is now beginning to prove itself a major market for application software that meets its needs. And with app developers potentially running out of good ideas for the north American market there may in fact be an untapped goldmine in educational apps and other apps of benefit to African consumers and mobile users as they continue to grow and transform their social norms and behavior around this technology. Hmmmmmm…I know some guys who develop software in Vancouver.