I attended the session on the Future of Social Networking, given by Charlene Li with the Altimeter Group. I've spoken with Charlene before and she's very dialed into to what's happening without being hyperbolic.
I agreed with the general points of her presentation, especially some of the timing aspects. The coordination of standards is HARD and will take time. I think this point was lost on some of the SxSW crowd.
Here is her presentation on Slideshare.
Here are my notes, in case you just want to read and not flip through slides.:
Future of Social Networking
Charlene Li
Altimeter Group
Three things to makes social networks like air:
1. Identity - who you are
2. Contacts - who you know (depth of connection)
3. Activities - what you do (your history)
And it's still very early, so patience is important
Technologies
Facebook Connect
-vs.-
The New Open Stack
Open ID
XRDS-Simple
OAuth
PortableContacts
OpenSocial
Identity
Context - work, family, etc.
Struggle to maintain separation between context
Friend Management is tough today
Filters and groups are available but laborious to use
Filter make friends and news feeds more manageable and valuable
Implicit social data fills in the gaps
Closeness
Calendar
Call
SMS
Facebook
Twitter
Address Book
A "social algorithm" will make privacy and premissions easier to magae
Context make content privacy easier
Community based privacy
Based on what your trusted friends do
What will get everyone to open?
Money
Most digital activity resides OUTSIDE of the top social networks and portals
Tying content and discussions to social network via data exchange
Leverage social relationships to target ads based on relationships
Most social ads require explicit action
Media6 maps network neighbors
Use for targeted advertising
Rise of the personal CPM
Understanding the value of the influence role
Based on social graph instead of behavior
1) Evaluate where social make sense
Identify where social network data and content can/sould be integrated in the experience
Leverage existing identity and social graphs where your audience already is
Get your privacy and permission policies and processes with an open strategy
Find your trust agents
2) Get your backend data in order
Remove multiple sign-in
3) Prepare to intergrate social networks into your organization
Social networks will disrupt traditional information flows
Where are customers in the org chart? Top or bottom?