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14/02/2012 by
8688 views

The Social Web Trends Of 2012

Social changed the web forever. With the inclusion of social, users were empowered and gained the ability to share on a global level instantaneously. Social gave consumers a voice brands could no longer ignore.

The social web is maturing and showing drastic changes in the near future. What kind of changes and trends are we talking about?

Last week research and intelligence provider the Global Web Index released their findings of a wide scale research on the consumer adoption of the internet.  The survey was held among 80.000 people across 27 markets. Within this research there are some interesting key take-outs that you will likely want to stay on the lookout for.

1. Gigantic China

China is the mighty superpower that already overtook the US and Japan combined with the amount of internet users. They are ranked #1 of the total internet users with over 500 million internet users.

The big numbers keep coming in, China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo is showing an immense growth. In fact Sina Weibo has twice as many active micro-bloggers than Twitter on a single market user base. Sina Weibo will launch an English version sometime in 2012, this shows they are willing  to claim and compete with international players.

2. Massive Mobile

Smart phones have pushed the mobile web and gave birth to the world of mobile apps. Asia Pacific seem to be taking this trend further with over 47% users downloading an app on a monthly basis. And within the next 5 years mobile device activity will outstrip fixed PC usage in emerging markets.

With the ‘always connected’ smart phones, brands and businesses are being pushed by the consumer. They are being forced to take part in the mobile trend, either by an app or a mobile website at the very least.

3. Facebook Fatigue

Of course Facebook is the largest social network with over 850 million users globally. Surprisingly Mark Zückerberg’s playground is seeing a decline in user adoption in the US. The growth is of users is now dependant on emerging markets.

Apparently Facebook fatigue is spreading beyond the early adaptors in the US, this trend might even spread to other markets that adopted Facebook in a later cycle.

Google is pushing forward with their social network Google+ but is still far from a real threat to Facebook. If Facebook really wants to push forward they should start claiming social (facebook) commerce. Really, being the largest social network Facebook can gain a lot of revenues by introducing a true shopping experience with the inclusion of Facebook credits.

4. Social Branding

These days a lot of brands are referring to their social profiles on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Brands shouldn’t forget that their main website needs to be maintained accordingly. Makes sense, but with all the referral linking to social sites brands can start to lose focus.

Remember, this is an asset that can be fully customized (unlike social networks) and have insightful visitors traffic analytics.

I can imagine where the sudden urge comes from to be active on a social channel. According to the Global Web Index there’s nearly 1/3 of all users worldwide that have liked a brand page or product online. And a quarter of users visited a branded page/group.

Brands need to keep in mind though, one of the main objectives of a consumer engaging with your brand is that they want something in return. This is most likely in the form of a discount/coupon. The ‘reward’ part can be a lot of things, just remember that you reward and show your appreciation towards your consumers.

I’ve named a couple of social trends that are already on-going, do you see any future trends in the field of social? Share with us in the comments below!

Source: Shutterstock, Social Branding image, Global Web Index

 

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