The Trend Blend Map & Social Networks

Inspired by the subway map, Nowandnext.com and Future Exploration Network have collaborated in producing a map of major trends for 2007 and beyond, across ten segments: society & culture, government & politics, work & business, media & communications, science & technology, food & drink, medicine & well-being, financial services, retail & leisure, and transport & automotive.
Each issue covers new trends, innovations and ideas, future risks and opportunities in each of these segments, as well as the key intersections between the trends.
I will see some of the more interesting trends in this landscape. You are on a little tour of 2007 with me?

I get the blue one. Let me see, it is media & communications. The first station is “Social Network”. It derives from Web.2.0. I remember.....there was a time when we had just a few channels to communicate each others, but now we have a huge choice of ways as Skype, MSN, Facebook, My Space and so on. Now the E-mail is the least popular communication. You need the time to write a long letter, to send it, and a lot of patience to receive an answer.
Now, we have social networks, private spaces where you communicate in interactive way with friends, colleagues, why not business partners. We have a space where we meet people with same interests, we discuss, and we change opinions and information, and so on... Such of ways allow us to be more socially engaged.
Many people say, that Internet make people, unsocial and uncommunicative. I don’t think so!
The social networks facilitate meetings with people who are interested in same thing like you; you are not constraint by time, space or distance. It allows us to discover more of our potential to relate to other humans by how we share and communicate on the Internet, because we all create and share in some form. The social networks help us to learn more about ourselves, more of whom we are, that it could be expressed with this new social medias.
Oh, I didn’t see!
I had arrived on the first important crossing station – “Personalisation”.
What I am crossing here? First of all, it’s the Well-being, which takes me to the “Happiness”. Yes, I’m happy because I don’t feel me lonely. It’s due to progress of Science &Technology, and thanks to
Web 2.0. I can exchange what I want with who I want, because I have free access to Society and Culture.

After I saw effects of new communication technologies in our private individual and social life, I’m asking me about the role of Social Networks in the World of Business and in organization?
Has it the future there?
So, I can take the trend of Financial Services, Retail & Leissure, or go on with Media & Communication.
Using the Mass Customisation, Digital Cash, Identity Solutions, Pop-up & speed Retail, On-line advertising and affiliation strategy you can make money with your blog or Private Space.
The Social Networks aren’t only to share information, reflexions and opinions. It could be you business.
Let’s, in first, we look at My Space.
It’s for amazing, isn’t it? You have your own Space, where you put your favourite pictures, songs, films (or all that you want depending on your interests) and your reflexions. You have an idea, you put it.
So, there are people who visit your Space, share reflexions, ideas and opinions. And naturally, there is someone, who likes your idea, he was the same ...and you have found someone to work for realisation of your idea; you have found a partner.
It’s easy, isn’t ‘it? The same thing is valuable for blogs, too.
So, I have just arrived in the station of “Globalisation”. I discover that is as Paris St.Lazare, where all of trends are crossing each others. Why is it so important, this globalisation?
Firstly, let us look what happens on the market?
The products now is launched and made instantly global, turning into global customer.
In the era of mass production, mass advertising and the online accessibility with customization, community and values, consumers wanting, demanding and expecting to play a much more active role in what was until now the producer's/brand's domain.
 Never before have had consumers enjoyed doing research and 'competitive analysis' and 'benchmarking' as much as they do now, and doing it far more diligently than most corporations do. Blame sites, blogs, forums and mags such as: Ciao, Cool Hunting...
The customers can exchange info, informing each other on the best of the best.
And as result, we find that products of companies, which are setting consumer expectations in a high level, are more fun, have better design, and are cheaper. Their customer service responds to emails, and has Skype ID. Their stuff tastes, looks, feels better. Let us gave as example Google’s way of work .
Google’s advantage resides in its democratic decision structure. It is ‘engineering-centric,’ with more than half of its total number of employees performing non-management/non-administrative tasks. Individuals with ideas for new development projects must first submit their idea to an internal mail list, where 200 of their peers provide constructive criticism before any coding takes place.
As the result Google continues to push new modules into the main lines in an attempt to occupy the centre circle and slowly becoming a metaphor of the Internet itself.
It slowly takes the role of giant, and if the bigger Microsoft being less flexible and less democratic, will not substantially change his hierarchic decision structure and open its managerial structures, he will lose a substantial market share.
It’s an example of relationship between Globalisation, Happiness, Web 2.0., Outsourcing, and Work /Life Balance.
It’s approved by what’s going on with Web & New technologies market:

Google scores against Microsoft and Yahoo due to its massive marketing data advantage
Blogs bloom, and prepare for the 2008 election
Social networks become a place where members make money
Big ad investments start streaming in
Digital ID initiates a major change that makes the web more reliable, user and investor friendly

Therefore, there is a real reason that Google, Deloitte, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Morgan Stanley and other companies actively encourage their staff to use networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype.
If we take for instance Facebook, the internet portal of 2007, it is true that in many organizations Facebook is viewed as a time-waster and is often being blocked. (Assuming an employee spends an hour a day “whiling away” on Facebook, an employer would lose $6200 in productivity, according to SurfControl’s estimates. With 800,000 Australian businesses at risk, total exposure is $5 billion, the firm estimates. Australian Financial Review, “Facebook ban a little hasty”.)
The danger here is the loss of young, talented workers. (A global retail bank with 70,000 staff had received loud complaints from staff when it banned Facebook).
This was the similar story to instant messaging in financial services. (Financial market traders started using IM because it was useful, but banks were concerned about security and audit trails. Services then became available that provided secure, auditable IM).
The same thing is happening with social networks.
With the development of Internet ID and reinforce of securities, it can in fact benefit the organization from use of social networks.
So, social networking platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn can be benefit for business, likewise there are social networking tools specifically for business.
The task is to educate the corporate sector more on the benefits of effective social networks inside and outside the organization, for the company itself and for its employees.
For instance, the Facebook’s application called Workbook, that allows employees to securely interact with their peers using Facebook . With WorkBook, employees can find and stay in touch with corporate colleagues, publish company-related news, create bookmarks to enterprise application data and securely share the bookmarks with authorized colleagues, update on status change and get general company news. Employees can freely use Facebook, with no danger of information leaking outside the organization or access being granted to unauthorized personnel.
In one step Facebook can become an enterprise application, including proprietary discussions.
The intention is to use Facebook not just internally, but also with clients and fund managers.
The use of social networks in organizations can create real competitive differentiation and profitability. Likewise as so many employees are already using online applications and web tools, the companies will prefer to offer them secure applications rather than incur the risk of things not being done well by IT. And last, but not least, using Web 2.0 tools demonstrates leadership and innovation, which attracts and retains talented staff.
Absolutely – what used to be difficult and expensive is becoming easy and inexpensive. The use of Social Networks by employees can be profitable to company.

Let us take some examples of uses of Facebook in the enterprise:

A civil engineer based in London, uses Facebook to find corporate colleagues in Asia and North America who have already solved a structural challenge she has just been assigned.
A field rep in Omaha, posts a link to an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, so that his peers in other regions can use the information in sales presentations.
Corporate management announces a recent large deal to all employees and posts a new human resources policy to European employees.

All of that is to illustrate the deeply interconnected nature of social networks.

But, of course, there are some disadvantages:
We aware of one of the most socially transformative aspects of the web is that it not only lays everything bare, but it also has a permanent memory and what goes online lasts forever. Anyone can in a moment uncover anything that’s ever become public about you. Many employers see this is a massive boon, and scour the web for anything negative about their candidates.
So today, owing to Web 2.0 and Social Networks we become highly visible in a range of different situations, as well as expressing our opinions, open-mindedness becomes more relevant, and people can be seen more as they are rather than as the corporate persona they often assume.
It’s no wonder that many big companies use Social Networks like Second Life and recently Facebook for recruiting.
I’m looking around and I’m finding that I have just passed through the station of “Anxiety” and I go on to the next one that is “Ethics”. Here when I see the Science & technology line, which leads me to Emotionally aware machines, Biotech and Nanotech, and Web 2.0. I have good hopes that humanity will overcome difficulties with climate change, earth’s resources, poverty and famine, and diseases.
And I thank for existence of opensources concept that make possible the involvement of worldwide researchers in this process.
On the other side, I see the artificial intelligence, cloning, robotics and humans 2.0. ....and I’m afraid of the future. There is too many choices, too many information, too many discovers. Every day there is something new, I feel myself overcharged. So, I’m aware of importance of ethics and consciousness of everybody, and everyone’s capability to select the best for himself and for others.
Are we going to far and too fast? Are we will be, as in the science fictions, surrounded by clones and robots, are we will spend our time, meet our friends and loves in the virtual reality?
And in the end you have so many friends in Facebook (or in each other Social Network), but in fact, you are alone in front of a machine. You communicate, you have a contact with brains, but can you smell their parfums, can you see their eyes, can you see every little muscle’s movement and difference in their voices? Can you sense the humans in front of you?
Yes, you are more socially active, but are you more sensitive?
What we leave to next generation, are they will be so different from us, what world they live in, and so on, and so on.......
I have just arrived on the last station, “Nostalgia”, which leads me, once again, on “Anxiety”.