Future Developments

The Future Developments of Social Networking is an area which involves many predictions but not much fact and this is for the pure reason that no one can know for sure what will happen. Many believe that the concept of SNS has unlimited potential and yet there are others that state it will crumble under the test of time and that it is just a temporary faze until the next faze comes along. The answer is likely to lie somewhere in the middle. The economic climate being what it is a current won’t help any new developers get their new sites of the ground, this is due to funding and the fact there is too much competition out there.

Society may even become bored within the social networking community, they may eventually realise that rather than hiding behind their keyboards and building a virtual list of friends they would rather deal with real face to face interaction and get out into the real world.

The extent of this can be shown when looking at micro-blogging website Twitter. This site is generally based around the question “What are we doing right now?” The user updates their status informing their friends of everyday events occurring within their lives.

   Figure 4 shows the growth of twitter in just the last year. With an increase of 280% it is clear to see that twitter is a really popular SNS. But despite their huge popularity they have been greatly criticised for taking the ‘staying in touch’ concept too far. Do others, including friends want to know whether the user has had salad or pizza for lunch or even when they are about to shower. Are people really interested in the excruciating minutiae of everybody’s day?

Well the answer is yes, the facts and figures show this. Social Networking communities are forever on the increase and becoming more popular every day and the interesting thing is that nobody can know for sure if this will end.

Technological advancements have increased the growth of social networking communities by a huge margin. The user does no longer have to be engaged with a computer to access SNSs, they are all accessible via mobile phones and tablets and not even advanced versions, for example texts can be sent from mobiles to update your current status, mood and location. Users can even sign up to SNS via their portable devices. With more and more devices having 3G and Wi-Fi compatibility there is no need for the user to ever go near a computer.