The Top 5 Pure Social Media Trends in 2012

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“Top social media trends in 2012” would find at-least a quarter of the topics from outside the present social media niche up to a good extent.

While 2011 itself experienced the never before growth in tablets and the developments in mobile technologies, in my personal view, they never could be considered directly within the niche of social media. If it were so, we should have been covering all the developments from the companies like HP, Apples’ law suits against Samsung and other tablet makers in different countries, development of sandwich ice-cream Android etc. within the discussion of social media.

In an indirect manner, all the technological developments would surely contribute towards the enrichment of social media trends in 2012.

The trends supposed to dominate social media in the year 2012:

1. Quick sharing platforms with Shorter Attention Span: As opposite to most of the bloggers who think a godly detailed blog post would be appreciated more, I go with Jeremiah Owyang’s prediction. Owyang adds that “as attention spans wane, readers want smaller, shorter bits of content, and this is why we’re seeing the growth in behaviors that social networks provide: commenting, sharing, images.” And with this point, I see “Pinterest” to be one of the biggest players in the social media game in 2012. And other platforms like twitter, Facebook, Linkedin might also come up with their own badges and other interactive strategies to keep the audience entertained based on that theory of short attention span.

2. World would become ‘homesick’ to/on Facebook and would turn its back gradually: In the New Year, Facebook would reach its all time high and probably may even hit the BEP (break-even point). And if Facebook fails to suit the growing demands of privacy and security, it might lose a good battle to Google+. And honestly, with the rise of the less censored ads in FB, I see this happening by the 3rd quarter of 2012. And on a side note, Google+ crossed 60 million users on 29th December, 2011.

3. A Technical convergence to flatter/sharpen our social profiles: After Timehop.com and social back-up services like Socialsafe, Backupmy.net, Backupify.com etc., we can expect the rise of platforms and applications that would help us with services to delete or/and modify the history/appearance on social networking platforms on a selective basis.

4. Medium Transition: Though social media consumption would not be less, yet the year 2012 will experience a transition in the medium. The popular mode of medium would shift from PC to more of mobiles and smart-phones. At present the number of Facebook users who access it through their mobile devices stands at a point of 350 million with 475 mobile operators globally. This data would surely surge in the coming year climbing on the ease of access it provides for each of social media platforms ranging from Google+ to twitter.

5. New thrust in entertainment through social media:  Ranging from badges to social media games, most of the platforms would further diversify their services to keep the audience entertained and engaged. And in the same course would emerge new players in the front row. Each & every entertainment delivering medium would surely dwindle with social media at large by the end of 2012.

Differences in opinions and the ever-changing way of media consumption would surely amaze us in the New Year. The social media trends in 2012 are predicted to bring a new hope and a new experience.