Infegy Blog

Social Networking is changing every day. New services are spawning constantly with new and creative ways to interact with others. Popularity is shifting between these services. But, where will it go from here? Where should it go from here?

I think the key ingredient to the future of Social Networking is mobility. Many services like Twitter, Brightkite, Flickr and others are starting to add some great mobile support, but I believe there are more great things to come. What I’d love to see is a centralized social networking application that comes standard on smartphones and other mobile phones. That will help generate mass appeal and more widespread use. This application would need to take more advantage of the GPS capabilities that are gaining traction in smartphones and provide the ability to view people near you with no involvement whatsoever. Imagine walking into a bar or club, taking your cell phone out of your pocket and seeing a list of people in the bar that want to chat and meet. Imagine being able to send a message to anyone in the area saying “I’m shy, come talk to me.” Socializing would be revolutionized. Making a new friend or meeting a new guy or girl could be accomplished by simply walking in the door.

So, it starts with more mass mobility and widespread use. Then, the possibilities become more and more exciting. You could walk in a restaurant and send a message to people eating at the restaurant for a recommendation on what to order. You could talk to people in an airport and find someone to get coffee with you while you wait for your flight. I’d love to be able to see stats around the city - how many people are where and who’s doing what. Just think of how fantastic it would be to have the option of viewing the most popular events around the city in real-time or check out a map of a specific area and see where the hot spots are at the moment. Data could be gathered from this service to pull some amazing analytics such as the amount of visitors a location gets on average, or what day of the week it receives the most traffic. The possibilities are quite endless.

As Social Networking expands, I’m sure we will see many of these desires become a reality. Our world is becoming more and more virtual and we need to be ready to adapt to it. I, for one am thrilled to be a part of it and am excited to see what the future holds.

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