10 for 2010 via TrendsSpotting

The research agency TrendsSpotting has been publishing a series of reports looking at upcoming trends for 2010, and it’s just released its social media one: http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=1730

They’ve canvassed a number of the social media great and good to make 140 character predictions for the upcoming year, and I’ve picked – and commented on – a handful that I think are of particular potential interest to researchers.

Pete Cashmore: “Our whereabouts may optionally be appended to every Tweet, blog comment, photo or video we post.”

There are already services doing this, and it’s an exciting trend for those researchers into “listening”. Analysing the data will be, as ever, a big headache: we’re only just managing to get a grip on automated sentiment analysis, so location analysis is going to take a while longer.

Marta Kagan: “Real-time reviews will scare the pants off many a brand and foster a new ‘radical-beta’ mindset”

In other words, “listening” needs to be an active, not reflective process, and the lines of communication between the ‘ear’ (getting the reaction) and ‘hand’ (making changes) have to be as short as possible. Research can’t afford to look like a middleman in this environment.

Marian Salzman: “Mobmedia/Virtual Bullies – social media sites allow for virtual bullies + flashmob gatherings around disputes; heightened by celeb involvement”

As Trafigura and Simon Cowell can attest, being on the receiving end of direct social media action isn’t nice. The dangers for insight teams won’t just be in failure to anticipate social media storms, it’ll be in the temptation to overrate their importance.

Caroline Dangson: “Surge in enterprise spend for social platforms in late 2010. US online community software market will grow 63% in 2010 to $679m”

In the land of social media, it’s always jam tomorrow, and “late 2010” seems far away: but if the market in virtual communities isn’t booming quite yet, interest in them is, so this prediction may not be just optimism.

Gaurav Mishra: “Brand marketers investing in communities that are built around a bigger social object: a lifestyle, cause or passion.”

Marketers have always done this, but I think the key word here might be “investing” – communities exist because people want them to, and the choice between building your own or sponsoring or tapping existing ones isn’t always easy.

Marc Meyer: “Twitter will offer a premium level option that’ll allow the creation of hosted invite-only discussions”

Sounds great – but let’s be sceptical: if you want hosted invite-only discussions, why use Twitter? I might stick my neck out and predict that 2010 will be the year we forget about Twitter as a direct research tool, rather than a listening or desk research one.

Robert Scoble: “Foursquare – the ‘cool’ kids are on it, it feeds on itself. People are going to use the system all their friends are on.”

I think 2010 will involve a lot of searching for the next big thing, and location-based social service foursquare might be it – but I think it’s more likely that we won’t find one. Once the Twitter boom tailed off in mid-2009, this year was about consolidating and learning as much as innovating. and that will continue in 2010: the “next big thing” is probably Facebook.

Adam Cohen: “Marketing programs focus more on activating brand advocates than general customers.”

Is the same true of researchers? Does the shift to listening and away from probability sampling suggest we’re focusing as an industry on the happy and engaged few, not the mass? It’s easier to listen, after all, if people want to talk – but there are risks in this shift of focus, and debates over them will heat up next year.

Connie Bensen: “SM will shift from being experimental to having metrics and the loop will be closed so that SM monitoring is necessary and actionable”

Metrics are hot in social media at the moment, though they’re rarely as simple as one might like them to be. But in research as in the wider social field, expect a push for more quantitative ways of coping with the flood of data. Another trend that’s more a continuation than anything new.

Pete Cashmore: “Expect personal privacy – or rather its continued erosion – to be a hot media topic of 2010”

The recent Facebook privacy settings brouhaha is one element in a debate that’s far wider than research: how much do people want to share, how much do they know they’re sharing, how much do they expect people to use it? The optimists envisage a far less private world with people making informed choices to share for their own good. The pessimists see plenty of legislation, scandal and anger along the way.