It's been a few years since Twitter first came out. At first, I didn't understand what it was, and I just used it because it was trending, but now it's become a part of my life. I think I might be a little addicted, but I'm sure there are many others who feel the same way. Its momentum shows no signs of slowing down, and its penetration rate in Japan is only increasing. Even some of my friends who aren't in the internet industry are starting to use it.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but I believe that so-called "social media," including Twitter, will become the main artery of the Internet in the future. In this article, I will explain why.

*As many of you may have already noticed, the "social media" we hear about these days is clearly different from the one-way services like blogs and YouTube that were used a few years ago, even though the term is the same. Today's "social media" refers to two-way microblogs such as Twitter and Facebook feeds. Please note that this article is written with that in mind.

From search to social media

Before social media, search was undoubtedly at the heart of internet life. It was once said that "if it doesn't appear in search results, it doesn't exist on the internet," and techniques such as SEO and SEM, as well as related businesses, emerged. When launching a new service or media, advertising and ranking high in search results were crucial to whether the average user would find it. However, statistics suggest that this has recently changed.

This graph compares the traffic sources of several websites between social media and Google. If your website is generating traffic like this, you can see that you can't just focus on SEO.

Until now, portal sites and search engines have been responsible for sorting and organizing the infinite amount of information available, but it is no exaggeration to say that social media will expand that share from now on.

Social Media for Developers

mixi

Since the release of the Mixi app last year, social applications have been gaining more and more attention, and we can say that we are currently in a gold rush.

There are several reasons why social applications are so popular, but the most important one is that third parties provide compelling apps. Supporting this is the social nature of the SNS that acts as the container. Users who experience a compelling app tell their friends about it and spread the word, which in turn encourages developers to provide even more compelling apps. It's this cycle that makes social apps so popular.

One of the elements that supports word-of-mouth on social apps is the so-called activity stream, which is also displayed in the Mixi app as "App Update Information."

In fact, this activity stream is also a type of social media. I expect that eventually Mixi will also display it mixed with voice, which will make it easier for users to understand and have a stronger influence.

Think of Foursquare. As I mentioned in a recent article, Foursquare has increased its value by linking with Twitter and Facebook and inserting updates into timelines. (Needless to say, Foursquare is not an application within a social networking site, but it is a type of social application in that it utilizes social graphs and activity streams.)

In this way, for social apps, being able to get into the timelines that users normally view has advertising effects in itself. When you add to this the effect of social word-of-mouth, it goes without saying that social media is important to developers. There is no doubt that social media is one of the reasons why apps are now attracting 1 million users in a single month.

Social Media for Marketers

I'm sure many of you have heard of the term social media marketing. It's about using social media for marketing, and it seems to have become a hot topic among marketers recently.

Although it is outside my area of expertise, I would define social media marketing as "marketing conducted by companies and other organizations by entering social media and communicating with users."

Social media is attracting a lot of attention as a distribution channel for information. The trend is shifting from traditional search-based marketing methods such as SEO and SEM to marketing methods using social media, and the terms SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) are becoming more common.

The word-of-mouth power of social media, as explained above, has attracted the attention of many marketers, and this enthusiasm is likely to continue for some time.

Reference blog

New Technology

So, from what we've introduced so far, you can see that social media has a bright future, but some of you may be wondering if Twitter and Facebook are just amazing. Why do we say "social media will become the aorta" and not "Twitter and Facebook will become the aorta"? The answer is that new technologies are emerging, and we are on the verge of a future where various social media will be seamlessly connected.

Social Media May Get Much More Convenient for Businesses

cliqset.com-identi.ca

It's a little hard to see, but this screenshot shows a mention from Cliqset.com to my account at identi.ca. Can you see how the identi.ca account appears on my timeline even though it's not following my Cliqset.com account? (You can actually follow them!)

Cliqset.com is a FriendFeed-style social media aggregator. identi.ca is a demo site for the open source project status.net, a microblogging platform that's a Twitter clone with a decentralized architecture. Both sites made this possible by implementing advanced social web technologies like ActivityStreams, WebFinger, Salmon Protocol, and PubsubHubbub.

With all this, there's no reason to be tied to Twitter or Facebook, right? Users can follow anyone on their preferred social media service, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, and communicate with them without worrying about which service they use.

This means that social media will continue to grow without relying on the popularity of Twitter or Facebook alone.

summary #

Social media is gaining support from social media operators, developers, and marketers, and is becoming more and more convenient without being biased towards any particular service. The trend is definitely moving towards social media. How do people open a browser on their computer screen and find the information they want? Isn't it clear that the path to this is shifting from portal sites and search to something centered around social media?

If you were the director of a web service, how would you attract customers? If you were the marketer of a new product, how would you advertise it? Of course, you still need to think about search, but from now on, you should never underestimate social media marketing. In fact, by actively utilizing it, it is now possible to attract customers at a level never before imagined.