In 2002, social network Friendster made its debut with 3 million users. Today the top social network site is Facebook, with near 1 billion users. And “social” doesn’t mean just “friends” anymore, but also like-minded people or those who share similar interests.
Nearly three-quarters of online US adults use social-networking sites (up from 8 percent in 2005), according to the Pew Research Center. Also, people share more often: 54 percent of Internet users have posted original photos or videos to websites and 47 percent share photos or videos they found elsewhere online. And 6 percent of online adults are Reddit users, a hugely popular website featuring what the community likes through a user-voting system.
Consumers in 2014 will continue to gravitate towards platforms that connect them to peers. Apps allow you to watch football games on TV together with people across the world, buy group deals on your friends’ recommendations, and share the progress of your exercise program with everyone you know.
Collaboration is also on the rise – what Kleiner Perkins's Ms. Meeker calls “win-win-win sharing.” Waze, a community-based traffic and navigation app, expects to double its workforce in 2014. Yelp, a restaurant and entertainment review site produced by consumers, has seen quarterly revenues rise 63 percent from a year ago. Crowdsourcing, which solicits contributions from a large group of people, is moving into the mainstream and will continue taking over traditional tasks or entire processes – from ideas and design to money and products.
Different trends are shaping the future of crowdsourcing. First, people are curating content on a number of social platforms that include: YouTube playlists, Foodspotting guides, Pinterest, Flickr galleries, Amazon lists, Theneeds, Scoop.it, and Storify. Second, the center of gravity is shifting from creating content to curating it. As a result, consumers will want products and services that leverage the combination of communities, algorithms, and experts, to curate existing content.
Although 2014 will bring both exciting technology breakthroughs – and challenges – for consumers, the five dominant trends will be: simplification, convergence, big data, personalization, and communities.
– Gabriele Pansa is chief executive officer of Theneeds, a San Francisco-based technology startup. He may be reached at gp@theneeds.com.
