The Growing Influence of You and I

If we combine the growing power and knowledge of individuals, we get… social and knowledge networks. Social networks have been the focus of much attention in the first decade of the new millennium, visited by more than half of the online population globally.  New behaviors and values are emerging as  younger generations share vast amounts of personal information virtually, reflecting “real world” social behaviors – although there are growing concerns over privacy.  The power of these networks in sharing information about products, services, fashions, ideas, culture and more is staggering — consider the impact of social network communications during the Arab Spring of 2011 and more recently the very cautious but very real public demonstrations in China, highlight the power of social media connectivity. Opinions can be beamed around the world in a twitter; positive and negative images can be viewed in seconds on youtube; social crowds can congregate on Facebook – there’s never been a scarier time for brand managers or a more exciting one as the ability to reach self-segmenting communities allows much deeper interactions and mass customization. The question is how the influence of these networks will impact the development of societies, values, politics and potentially markets.

Questions for Business Leaders

• What will be the key areas of influence of social media in the next ten years?  What will be the potential impact of this influence on our organization, its customers/consumers and markets?  What are the key opportunities and challenges?
• Which are and will be the most influential social networks in future, and how do we best track their influence?
• How do we interact with the most important social networks for our organization?

The GT Trend Report: Social Networks offers analysis and food for thought as you explore these questions, along with profiles of some of the leading social network sites.