The Social Technology

Recently, I was going through emerging trends report published by Gartner on their website and my eyes were struck on one point viz. Technology and social trends. I decided immediately that this would be the next topic for my blog.

Needless to mention with 700 million users worldwide and with over 4% of photos ever clicked stored in their database, Facebook is the Don of social networking web world. This title would not have been possible without the excellent management skills and charisma of Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook. Handling diverse users without the slightest of hitch is a job well done. One may wonder what is so great about social networking and how can this be of any advantage other than general chit chat and viewing videos and images?

The answer lies within the question itself i.e. networking. This whole concept is a blessing in disguise for many small scale businesses which were finding hard to reach out to their customers. It is slowly becoming a mass media communication technique adopted by startups to reach out to the public domain. And why not as no other technology connects 700 million people worldwide at one place and that too free of cost. Businesses ranging from selling unique hand made interior decoration stuff to heavy machinery based fashion garments don't hesitate to give few bucks to reach out to target customers across the globe.Social networking websites have tapped this ideology to monetize their workflows that connect businesses with cross geographical consumers.

Another thing that is gaining momentum is social collaboration through blogging, instant messaging, collaborative offices and crowd sourcing. Companies find blogging  a nice way to advertise their products and reaching out to the public. They don't mind paying few bucks to some eminent bloggers who can once in a while advertise their products. Moreover every company today has its own blogging site from where it can get in touch with it's customers. Any concerns, feedbacks, suggestions, new product launch, it's feature details and future upgrades are shared using this mechanism which provides a two way interaction interface both for consumers and the producer.

Last but not the least, Social feedback is a very powerful tool to gather feedbacks, opinions and general interest of the public on specific items as seen on youtube, flickr, Digg, del.icio.us and amazon. This is also a mechanism to know and understand what the end-user wants and companies can use the feedback to differentiate their products from others. The invention of "Like" and "+1" is seen as a breakthrough in the field of social networking and as a way to read people's mind- to know about their liking. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social technologies will be integrated with most business applications. Companies should bring together their social CRM, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a coordinated strategy. 


Lastly, I want to dedicate this blog post to my favorite tech icon Mr. Steve Jobs without the inspiration of whom,  the mobile technology and related segments wouldn't have sounded so interesting and meaningful.