Does Social Media have a Future?

In the past few years we have witnessed the explosive growth of social media. In the tough economic times that we face now on a daily basis the evolution of social media as a free platform has helped individuals and companies establish social media customer service strategies, and social media customer relationships. Social media has become a viable marketing vehicle.  Social media provides a means for receiving immediate feedback which can help in evaluating your business concept or strategy.

The future social media platform will incorporate analytics, TV integration, and location based interaction. One of the companies slated to take off this year is Foursquare which is a location based social media application.  

From a users standpoint this is a fun time in computing. It is important though that social media developers take the time to introduce a platform that will not go through major changes when growing. For example I believe that Twitter made a major mistake in rolling out their retweet function one way and then when it became popular they revised and redid its functionality. Things should change and develop over time but it is my opinion that your core functionality should pretty much stay the same.  That’s where good usability testing early on should correct issues that arise.