Lecture
Annotation: in the second part of the report I will talk about current trends in the development of social networks and give predictions for the next 3-5 years. In my previous report, which I published three years ago, I gave a well-defined forecast for the development of social networks in the world, which has now become 80% real, and we see the ideas I described live.
An important trend of the last 3 years. The last time I touched him quite superficially, then this trend was just beginning to develop, today it occupies a serious place in the development of social networks, but still only at the beginning of the journey. A social network is a huge union of people, and therefore a huge power. But as everyone knows, the government does not happen much, which means that social networks will strive to increase their influence. One of the most important strategic tools for increasing influence is the integration with all possible external sites, programs and the outside world in general. The deeper this integration will be, the more power social networks will receive. Therefore, this trend can be distinguished in the top 5 trends for the next few years. This process can be divided into two global groups:
Integration with external social networks has already quite actively entered our lives. Many millions of sites are tightly integrated with the most popular networks, and almost all new projects are created today with default integration. This can be in the form of links to the official community of fans of the site on social networks, there can be buttons for sending information to social networks, “I like” buttons, integration of online stores for selling goods, special applications for working with networks, commenting tools through social networks and much more. The next step will be the creation of specialized platforms for integration, which will create a “social” ecosystem within the sites, and users logged in on Facebook or VK will be able to receive everything the same as on the social network itself, while being on a third-party site. The same process can be done in the opposite direction: users can, without leaving the social network, get the information they need from third-party sites. In turn, external sites are happy to accept integration tools, because this is an additional influx of visitors from networks, and therefore additional profit. So social networks are concentrating power in their hands, one can say “they are getting sites for integration”.
At the same time, companies understand the importance of organizing communication between users within an ecosystem of sites, without letting them out and not trusting this important process to a potential competitor. After all, social networks are developing rapidly, and users require new content, so the risk of creating content that is close to a group of sites that previously integrated with a specific network, and thus turning a huge social network into a direct competitor for a smaller site or an entire segment, is not excluded. Companies are trying to create useful social functionality that will be one with the site and will be able to attract new users. Often, companies convert their sites into themed social networks and increase their popularity at times.
In addition to websites, desktop applications are also actively socializing. The trend began with programs for communication, in particular, messengers, but it will gradually shift to other software (for example, Microsoft actively integrates its Outlook program with social networks).
In the next few years, the trend of socialization will only increase, and popular social networks will focus more and more power and control over the entire IT sphere. Old products that do not properly socialize will gradually lose popularity. Content will be created and distributed with greater speed, thanks to users of social networks.
Just 5-7 years ago, social networks of a general type began to actively develop: for personal or business communication, networks built on a specific type of content, clones of common networks for local markets. Behind the common networks, thematic projects began to develop, which used the same mechanism of social networks, but in a specific limited niche. This process began 3-5 years ago and is now in a very active stage. Today you can find social networks for IT employees, tourists, music lovers, photographers, athletes, book lovers, politicians, scientists, etc. At the same time, many popular niches are still not filled in the world, for example, there are no popular networks for car enthusiasts, realtors, few networks for educational purposes and some other topics. Almost all thematic projects have a global level, not focusing on any particular country. The stage of creating global projects is now ending and the stage of creating thematic networks in local markets begins, most often these are to some extent clones of popular existing projects. In the next 3-5 years, the quantitative saturation of the market with thematic projects will end and the development of a qualitative component will begin. Actually, these projects repeat the history of the development of general networks, of which there are already many, and which are now starting to compete mainly on a qualitative level.
Today, users no longer want to receive editorial content that someone creates and selects without taking into account their opinions, they want to control this process and directly participate in it. It is for this reason that we will witness the creation of one or several thematic social networks in almost every more or less significant topic, which will be drawn to a significant part of users from among the target audience. Moreover, these communities will be based on a mixture of thematic content and user communications, and will also play a significant role in supporting services in the field of e-commerce, geolocation, integration with companies from related industries, etc. The easiest way to get into the stream of those sites that already have significant popularity, and they can only be properly transformed and add social functionality. This trend may create indirect competition between common networks and thematic communities, which in turn is likely to lead to the integration of such projects. The list of the most popular social networks can be viewed on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
A separate branch of development will be closed social networks of large organizations, which can also be attributed to thematic networks, such as commercial corporations, government organizations, political parties, etc. In such organizations it is very important to build effective communication between its members in many countries and cities, to convey the necessary information, to increase the efficiency of work. This trend is just beginning to develop, and for the time being it has been caught mainly by the largest companies, leaders who are beginning to introduce these technologies in their own home, thereby gaining good competitive advantages.
Social networks today on the wave of huge popularity, which every day only increases. Popularity in turn inevitably leads to rapid growth. After its emergence, social networks developed mainly in a quantitative way, encompassing more and more users, today social networks are moving into a stage of qualitative development, inventing new tools for interacting with users. Therefore, technological development in the next 3-5 years will become a prerequisite for survival in a competitive environment. The development of technology will be multifaceted, but a number of key trends can already be identified.
Communication tools
Communication is the basis of any social network, so communication tools will be developed first. This process has been ongoing since the creation of the first networks. Today, many leading networks are starting to collect all real-life human communications in their projects (for example, not so long ago Facebook announced the introduction of email technology in its project, it also claimed to buy Skype in mid-2011). In the very near future we should expect to enter all known types of communications in projects of this type, which will allow in one place to comfortably communicate with any person on the planet.
Work with content
Now social networks work on the principle of "User-Generated Content", i.e. the social network provides the necessary tools, and people use them to generate new content. The model works quite well, however, there are still few professional content creation tools, and users in the modern information world want more and more diverse, high-quality content. Previously, social networks tried to mainly structure the content of users, later began to create tools for filtering high-quality content, and in the near future we should expect the creation of a new level of functionality for creating and selecting content, as well as integration with content providers. The model of sites that mix social functionality and high-quality thematic content is very promising.
The possibility of integration for content providers is already there, although not everyone uses it. In addition to standard widgets that can be inserted on the content provider’s website, it is very beneficial to make special applications through the networking API. While the integration mechanism through the applications is not very convenient, users need to go into the application to get the necessary information, in the future we should expect the transformation of social networks into platforms on which different applications will develop, including applications from content providers.
At the same time, it is beneficial for social networks to create content within the network, whether it is the social network itself, users, or both, which will allow them to fully control and manage this process, therefore, along with the integration, new mechanisms for creating content will appear. In light of this, the concept of Web 3.0 is recalled, which is based on the creation of high-quality content: modern social networks can now create a qualitatively new platform for generating content, independently generate main content and allow users to filter this content, as well as participate in its creation or editing .
A special place can be identified entertainment content (games, video, music), which is now very popular among users. Integration with similar services is already underway (for example, Facebook announced integration with the Spotify music service, Warner Bros. announced the start of renting its films on Facebook, and earlier game networks from different companies began to appear in networks, in particular from the well-known game publisher Zynga ).
E-commerce tools
In the past few years, social networks have been trying to integrate with online stores and create tools for trading between users. This is a very interesting segment for social networks: now the e-commerce market has a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars, and social networks have hundreds of millions of potential buyers. It remains only to find an effective tool to sell goods and services to these buyers. As with content, there are two ways of development: integration with existing online stores and the creation of your own platforms.
Integration tools are currently not well developed. It is possible to create special application stores to social networks, which many online stores are now starting to do (for example, the Expedition store as an application), and you can also connect stores to networks, and upload your data to special sections (for example, section “goods” in the social network VKontakte). Such integration does not work very well, it is necessary to integrate more deeply into the social network, take into account user behavior, personalize trade, etc. Creating new integration tools can be expected in the coming years.
On the other hand, the social networks themselves are gradually moving towards creating their own e-commerce platforms. Already there is the Facebook Marketplace, Second Life Marketplace and other developments. It is profitable for social networks to create platforms, a special functionality that will allow selling and buying, and the network will act as an intermediary, earning on advertising, additional functionality, commissions and other services. This tool will be very much in demand for both ordinary users and companies, and social networks will be able to earn billions of dollars in net profit per year from this, which makes this branch of development a priority and gives confidence in its serious development in the foreseeable future.
Tools for work
Another significant trend in the coming years, in my opinion, will be the development of tools for work. They will develop in all networks to one degree or another, but the most serious steps in this direction will be made by networks for business communication, such as LinkedIn. Nowadays, people are increasingly transferring their work to the Internet and, in particular, to social networks, therefore, every day the need for special tools for work increases. You can expect the emergence of services for storing contacts, finding customers, workflow, employee management, collaboration, and even whole ERP-systems. These tools are likely to be free in the basic functionality, and additional functionality will be distributed according to the SaaS model.
The first steps in this direction have already been taken, social networks have begun to give access to third-party developers who can create special applications, including for work. Also, networks are starting to create functionality for finding work, trading, recommending people, etc. All these are just the first steps, further on the basis of professional networks special sections will be created to solve these or other working issues, and possibly whole platforms, and on the basis of networks for personal communication, separate functions will be created, mainly specifically for companies to give their ability to conduct online activity.
In the foreseeable future, you can prepare for the emergence of new networks or the transformation of old ones, which will be working platforms and focus on economically active people. In such networks, communication tools, business applications distributed according to the SaaS model, and tools for collaborative remote work will be strongly developed.
Personalization
Any social network has great opportunities to personalize their work for a specific user. It can track its behavior, interests, location, and on the basis of all this information, issue personalized content of any nature. The very principle of personalization is very much in demand, today there is a huge amount of information on the Internet, most of which is useless, and this tool allows you to select the necessary information for a particular person, at a certain point in time and in a certain place. The trend has been developing for more than 5 years, but so far it has not even exhausted the potential possibilities by half, so in the coming years we can expect its further development.
Social networks have already learned how to give personalized advertising, highlight the content he needs (for example, the interesting Discover Facebook Pages service, which allows you to search for interesting pages for a specific person based on the data he gave to the network), recognize important people for people, etc. In the near future, we should expect even better personalization of content when networks learn to link content into a single semantic web, creating multi-level links of information within projects, and a whole chain of content of interest to the user will drag along one link of the network, and, perhaps, the network will even begin to personalize . In many respects this will be closely related to technological development, the new functionality will appear personalized by default.
Advertising technology
Another important development trend in recent years is the development of advertising technologies. Именно они до сих пор остаются основным источником прибыли социальных сетей, а значит, данные инструменты будут серьезно развиваться в последующие 3-5 лет. Сейчас активно вводятся поведенческие технологии, которые показывают рекламу пользователю не только на основе информации из его профиля, но и на основе его поведения. В целом сети имеют огромное количество информации о пользователях, они, можно сказать, отслеживают его жизнь. Это позволяет им показывать рекламу максимально таргетировано и иметь высокий уровень конверсии посетителей в покупателей. К этим возможностям еще добавляется огромная база пользователей, которая к тому же очень быстро растет, что делает социальные сети очень привлекательными рекламными площадками. Все крупнейшие бренды уже выстроились в очередь и массово скупают рекламные места.
Сегодня во многих сетях мы уже можем таргетировать свою рекламу по следующим параметрам: страна, город, район, улица, пол, возраст, семейное положение, образование, должность, интересы и т.д. Кроме этого есть и поведенческие технологии: время показа, количество показов, показы после определенных действий и т.д. Эти инструменты позволяют довольно точно попасть в целевую аудиторию, выбрать её из огромной массы, при этом не имея огромных рекламных бюджетов. Такая реклама стала доступна всем: от частного лица до огромной корпорации.
В ближайшем будущем инструменты таргетинга будут развиваться и дальше, прежде всего это поведенческие технологии, которые со временем смогут предугадывать потребности пользователей с большой долей вероятности. Кроме того, в ближайшем будущем в социальных сетях появится много нового функционала, в частности в области электронной коммерции, это в свою очередь тоже станет огромной базой новой информации, которая позволит еще лучше таргетировать рекламу. Также сети активно экспериментируют над повышением эффективности рекламы (например, новый формат рекламы на Facebook, при котором пользователям платят за просмотр рекламы ). В этом десятилетии реклама в социальных сетях вполне может стать самым эффективным каналом продвижения товаров и услуг.
Geolocation
Относительно новый тренд, который во многом начал развиваться благодаря современным мобильным технологиям. Социальные сети постепенно учатся отслеживать физическое местоположение пользователей, и на основе этого предлагают им таргетированный контент для определенной местности (все, что физически близко к пользователю: друзья, развлекательные заведения, информацию о месте и т.д.) или целые геолокационные сервисы (в частности, быстро набирает популярность геолокационный сервис Foursquare ). Определение местоположения человека происходит либо автоматически с помощью мобильных технологий, либо посредством информации, которую дает сам пользователь. Информация такого рода позволяет социальным сетям внедриться в повседневную жизнь человека, что еще больше затягивает людей.
В ближайшие несколько лет будут активно развиваться мобильные ПК, смартфоны и подобные технологии, что повлечет за собой бурное развитие геолокационного функционала в социальных сетях. Даже при выключенном телефоне компании могут отслеживать местоположение с помощью других технологий, например, распознавание лиц. Многие существующие сервисы постепенно станут учитывать местоположение пользователей.
Анонимность
Одна из больших проблем социальных сетей сегодня, которую так или иначе им предстоит решать. Многие люди сознательно искажают информацию о себе, либо раскрывают малую часть данных, даже несмотря на инструменты анонимности. Поэтому в ближайшие несколько лет стоит ожидать появления новых инструментов анонимности, которые, возможно, позволят полностью скрывать данные или даже шифровать их, другими словами пользователи смогут находиться в сети и отслеживать активность своих друзей, при этом, не выдавая своей активности. Сегодня уже есть первые проекты, которые основаны именно на анонимности, такие, как Diaspora или NektoMe .
Бизнес в современном мире использует социальные сети практически во всех сферах деятельности, а не только для привлечения клиентов, как многие до сих пор думают. В целом этот процесс можно разделить на две большие группы, в зависимости от целей:
Внутри компаний, прежде всего больших, уже давно существуют разные информационные системы, как коробочные разработки, так и уникальные, однако только в последнее время они начали активно социализироваться. Первопроходцами, конечно, стали ИТ компании мирового масштаба, которым важно поддерживать эффективную коммуникацию своих сотрудников в разных уголках мира (например, Microsoft Corporation, Google, IBM, Apple, Cisco Systems и многие другие). По сути их информационные системы являются социальными сетями закрытого типа, только для сотрудников компании, хотя называют их по-разному. У сотрудников есть профили, коммуникационные инструменты, собственные блоги, базы знаний, корпоративные журналы… ¬это целая электронная экосистема внутри компании! Кроме крупных компаний эти технологии уже доступны и для небольших организаций, но в основном в виде сервисов для совместной работы (например, проект для совместной работы Manymoon , который к тому же тесно интегрирован с сервисами Google). Подобные системы сегодня очень востребованы, они решают огромное количество задач: управление проектами, накопление знаний, увеличение лояльности сотрудников, информирование, распределение работы и т.д., список задач можно расписать на много страниц. Сегодня такие системы уже неотъемлемая часть любой большой компании, а в ближайшем будущем подобные системы будут активно развиваться и усложняться, обретут новые инструменты для решения новых бизнес задач и, вполне возможно, станут интегрироваться с внешними социальными сетями.
Во внешнем мире компании используют социальные сети довольно активно и могут решать разные задачи: привлечение клиентов, поиск сотрудников, поиск информации, создание имиджа и многое другое. Причем, если раньше все эти цели решались с помощью других инструментов (клиентов искали с помощью рекламы на ТВ, сотрудников искали через специализированные издания, а имидж строили на пресс-конференциях), сейчас значительная активность перенесена именно в социальные сети, которые создают все новые инструменты для компаний и все более эффективно решают их задачи. Использование социальных сетей в целях бизнеса зависит, прежде всего, от региона, в котором работает компания, например, в США их используют почти все компании, а в России - в лучшем случае половина. По сути внешние социальные сети – это огромные скопления людей, а значит, их можно использовать в самых разных коммерческих целях. С одной стороны есть люди с потребностями, а с другой - компании, которые эти потребности готовы удовлетворять, но при этом пока мало инструментов, которые позволяют создать полноценную коммуникацию первых и вторых. Отсюда следуют простой логический вывод: в ближайшие 3-5 лет будет происходить бурное развитие функционала, который позволит создавать эффективную коммуникацию компаний с потребителями и будет хорошо решать стоящие перед компаниями задачи. Большинство компаний станут очень активными участниками во многих популярных социальных сетях и начнут тесную интеграцию на информационном уровне.
Кроме этого, разные организации часто создают тематические сети на своих целевых рынках, например, финансовая группа может создать социальную сеть для финансистов и извлекать из неё большую пользу для себя, а крупное учебное заведение может сделать сеть для образовательных целей и при этом еще и зарабатывать на ней. Сети от таких организаций будут активно развиваться, причем часто у них будет целый ряд особенностей, которые позволят тесно интегрировать компанию-владельца в социальную сеть.
Сегодня социальные сети в основном развиваются обособленно и к объединению не стремятся. Это связанно с тем, что сетями пока не охвачены огромные массы пользователей Интернета, идет быстрый количественный рост, поэтому острой потребности в его ускорении через объединение пока нет, а кроме этого, многие социальные сети являются в той или иной степени конкурентами. Однако эта тенденция постепенно сменится обратной: у людей есть потребность в объединении и укрупнении разрозненной информации, а первые примеры интеграции уже есть (например, в прошлом году появился сервис Yahoo! Pulse, который тесно интегрирован с Facebook ) или совсем свежи пример Google+, который интегрирует свои проекты в новую социальную сеть за счет чего во многом добился феноменального роста и сейчас Google+ самая быстрорастущая социальная сеть в мире. Вскоре сетям станет выгодно интегрироваться между собой, конечно, если они не являются прямыми конкурентами (например, тематическая сеть с контентом для менеджеров MeetTheBoss TV уже начала интегрироваться с LinkedIn, Twitter и Facebook). Независимо от социальных сетей в последние годы развиваются сторонние технологии и сервисы по объединению социальных сетей, которые находятся не в зоне их власти.
Процесс объединения понемногу двигается уже несколько лет. Первыми заметными технологиями стали:FOAF , XFN , OpenSocial , Google Social Graph и др. Некоторые социальные сети начинают поддерживать эти инициативы, в частности такие известные проекты, как MySpace, LinkedIn, Hi5, Bebo уже поддержали OpenSocial. А гигант Facebook в тоже время идет своим путем, создав протокол Open Graph для интеграции со сторонними сайтами, который, впрочем, приносит пользу по большей части самой компании.
Интересным представляется смысл технологии Social Graph. В Интернете есть огромное количество людей с определенными связями, прямыми и косвенными. Каждый человек имеет друзей, посещает любимые сайты, в том числе и социальные сети, потребляет какую-либо информацию. Часто связи пересекаются между собой и со связями других людей, например, два человека могут читать один и тот же сайт, это и есть точка пересечения. Все это можно представить как большую паутину, сам Интернет, по сути, является огромной социальной сетью. Активность и связи отдельного человека в сети можно отслеживать разными способами, самый простой – это собирать и анализировать информацию с нескольких самых популярных сайтов, таких как Google, Facebook, Yahoo и некоторые друге. Автоматический анализ этой информации может показать карту связей человека и сделать прогноз его интересов, например, человек А дружит в Facebook с людьми В и С, при этом этот А и С пользуются еще и Twitter, но не знают друг о друге на Twitter, система может сделать прогноз, что А и С могут подружится на Twitter и предложить им это. В целом это очень похоже на принцип семантической паутины, которому пророчат большое будущее, только именно в области социальных сетей.
Не менее интересным является и проект OpenSocial, который использует API многих социальных сетей и позволяет создавать кроссплатформенные приложения. Сети добровольно открывают доступ к информации и позволяют её использовать сторонним разработчикам. Хотя тут есть и существенный минус: если на основе этой технологии начнет расти потенциальный конкурент, сеть может просто закрыть ему доступ.
Кроме этого, уже давно существует технология OpenID , которая используется повсеместно, в том числе и социальные сети становятся провайдерами на базе этой технологии.
Также постепенно появляются и специальные сервисы, например, русскоязычный сервис Best Persons , который позволяет делать кросспостинг в разные блоги и социальные сети, собирать ссылки на разные профили в одном месте, подписываться на обновления друзей и т.д. Или англоязычный сервис Plaxo для объединения контактов. Развитию подобных сервисов часто препятствуют сами социальные сети, им невыгодно, чтобы пользователи проводили время на других сайтах или программах, при этом используя их возможности.
Technologies that allow to unite users in different social networks will gradually develop. Networks will actively promote this when they have exhausted resources for quantitative growth and will develop qualitatively. In the next few years, integration will be at the level of integration of networks with content providers, online stores, various services and similar projects, which is beneficial for them now. Later integration will move to a new level and will become more like a symbiosis. A separate road will be developed services that parasitize on social networks: in addition to integration through official tools, you can always make a parser and read information under the user login using bots.
We live in the era of mobile technologies, every year mobile devices are becoming smaller and enlarged with new functions, becoming an indispensable tool for people. You can access the Internet from almost any new mobile phone, regardless of location, since wireless networks cover a large part of the land. Not surprisingly, the penetration of these technologies into existing and new social networks.
Large projects that used to rely exclusively on the Internet today are overgrown with new functions using mobile technologies (for example, the VKontakte network has introduced mandatory binding of profiles to mobile numbers and relies on mobile micropayments). In addition, there are special services, largely focused on mobile technologies (for example, geolocation services Foursquare and AlterGeo). For such services, there is even a special concept “MoSoSo” - mobile social software.
In recent years, all popular social networks have already managed to acquire full-fledged mobile versions of their sites and to largely integrate mobile technologies, which enabled the progressive part of users to stay connected everywhere, which we can observe (for example, the mobile version of the Odnoklassniki social network). Often, commercial companies prohibit access to social networks during business hours, at the company's local network level, but this no longer works: employees, if they wish, communicate in networks via mobile devices. In the near future, mobile versions of networks will in no way yield to the functionality of the regular version of sites.
Now specialized mobile services use such popular technologies as GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Geo-IP and others. In the near future we can expect the introduction of new technologies, in particular, augmented reality. The development of such social networks and individual functions depends on the technological development of all mankind: the sooner the majority of multifunctional mobile devices will appear with full Internet access and support for all the necessary technologies, the faster the functions of this class will develop.
Social networks are vital to penetrate into all spheres of human life, then they will get maximum control over it and will be able to monetize as much as possible. Now the social network is an interesting site on the Internet. In the foreseeable future, a social network is a standard of living. Just imagine, you open the fridge, and he tells you that your friend Jack from Facebook, who also lives in the next street, just ordered a box of whiskey! Of course, you will immediately order the refrigerator to order soda urgently and start gathering to visit Jack ... Of course, this is a joke, but it is not as far from reality as it may seem at first glance. A person is a social being: it is important for him what others think of him, it is important for him to show himself, it is important for him to be in touch with someone.
Take, for example, the technique that surrounds us. Every day it becomes more difficult and more and more like full-fledged computers. In the near future, technology can quite acquire social functionality, technically it is already possible. The most usual refrigerators will know that their owners prefer, that their friends buy, there will be an opportunity to make a collective purchase with the guys from the neighboring houses; kitchen stoves will know what to cook for the hosts of tasty food today, what their friends prepared yesterday, how much to fry meat; TV will choose interesting programs for each family member, will organize joint viewing of favorite sports shows with neighbors and friends, select interesting advertisements; phones will prompt the nearest restaurant with good reviews, call friends with congratulations, remind the owners of important matters at the right moment, etc. Such functionality is in demand by a certain group of people, beneficial to social networks and can be beneficial for manufacturers of household appliances, so we should expect development in this direction in the foreseeable future, although, most likely, not in the very near future.
Another example is geolocation services, which are already actively developing. In the near future, being in any part of the city, it will be possible to look at the nearest entertainment places, offices of companies, public organizations; read reviews about any place; get detailed information about the historical monument; find interesting people around or company for entertainment in the evening; ask something from the locals; find fellow countrymen in a foreign city, etc. All this can be done using a small mobile device, be it a smartphone, netbook or something else. Some social networks are entirely aimed at organizing interaction in the real world and serve only as an organizational Internet platform (for example, a Meetup service). Geolocation services are in great demand and will be developed in the near future.
No one has learned to predict the future at 100%, one can only predict, and any forecast cannot cover all possible paths of development of the object of forecasting, it covers only the most probable ones. Therefore, tomorrow a new type of social network may appear, which few people have thought about today. In this section, I will rather fantasize, relying on indirect facts and my own logical conclusions, I invite all readers to share thoughts about this in the comments.
Operating system life
In the past decade, a lot of talk was about operating systems in the browser and their bright future. I think there is a chance that modern social networks may, to varying degrees, follow this path of development. Networks already cover many areas of life, and their penetration into our world is going very fast, with new technological opportunities every year. Many users no longer know all the possibilities of large social networks, such as Facebook, although they spend dozens of hours there every month, but on the other hand, networks are only at the very beginning of technological development. Therefore, I conclude that there may soon appear some Web-based social networks that can not only run applications and allow them to be managed, as modern operating systems do, but also largely control human life. It will be the center of all its communications, the shopping center, the training center, the center of many entertainment, the center for work, etc. Great management system of human life. And I don’t just know one such development, I participate in its creation.
Augmented Reality
Slightly less global way of development, but also very interesting - the introduction of augmented reality technologies in social networks. This technology can be attributed to geolocation services that are already in use. The meaning of technology: additional virtual information is superimposed on the real image. Today there are separate geolocation services that work with existing maps and new developments on augmented reality. Tomorrow we can expect the combination of these ideas and the emergence of new social networks.
Voice control
Another possible way to develop social networks with great potential. Voice control technologies already exist, it remains only to introduce them into social networks, which will create a new type of them, which, in my opinion, will be with a very simple interface and broad functionality, and all management will be done with the help of voice. This technology in the future should be expected in existing networks.
3D networks and virtual reality
For many years everyone has been talking about 3D in its various manifestations, in particular, that the Internet will soon switch to 3D interfaces. However, while it is more talk, trial development and individual projects, mainly for browser games. I believe that this trend will develop in the future, primarily because a person perceives objects from nature better, such as flowers: there are artificial flowers with rich colors, and besides, they never fade, but most people like living ones. Likewise with interfaces: it’s one thing to look at a flat screen with a photo of the interlocutor, and quite another is albeit in a virtual, but still room with the same interlocutor. Such developments have been underway for several years, and it is for social networks, but the time of virtual reality has not yet come, but it should be expected in the near future.
Artificial Intelligence
As I already wrote, social networks have huge databases of users, their connections, preferences, beliefs and other important information. Therefore, the introduction of artificial intelligence technology seems very promising. If the network learns at the automatic level to process all the available data and make logical conclusions, this will bring it hundreds of billions of dollars. The entire huge user base, which now brings network revenue mainly from advertising and paid services, will consume many products not through third-party services, but through a social network, because it will know what the user needs when and how to sell it.
Holograms
Probably a bit crazy idea, but it seems to me interesting: to use holograms to communicate with different interlocutors from a distance. Imagine you have a few friends who are far away from you and cannot be physically close when talking, but at the same time you have a device that can create a virtual copy of the interlocutor. A person, being on islands in the Pacific Ocean, calls his acquaintance who is in London, the signal receives the device, a 3D hologram appears near the person in London and she starts to talk like a real person. This creates a sense of the presence of the interlocutor nearby.
Conclusions: one can definitely say that everything is just beginning for social networks, in the coming years we are waiting for the rapid development of this interesting phenomenon of modernity. Networks will be transformed into full-fledged platforms for various spheres of life. First of all, we expect a total and pervasive socialization of the entire Internet and even everyday life, thematic projects will appear, business will increasingly penetrate social networks, the introduction of new technologies, including mobile ones, is expected, and disparate projects will be merged and integrated. In this part of my report I have touched upon a small part of all the changes that are awaiting us.
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Highly loaded projects. Theory of parallel computing. Supercomputers. Distributed systems
Terms: Highly loaded projects. Theory of parallel computing. Supercomputers. Distributed systems