Will Social Media Change in 2009?

There’s a ton of posts out there that talk about how social media will change in the upcoming year, what will happen with our communications and predictions for the year to come and looks-back at the year that was.

Me? Sure, I did the ranty (although, perhaps it was a little too ranty!) post the other day about the things that I hoped would just go away in 2009, and I’ve been looking aroung at the posts that try to predict 2009.

Twitter gained a major following this year and started to go mainstream, big time. Growth is off the hook, (I can’t believe I just wrote that in all seriousness. What the hell does that even *mean* anyways?) and I can only imagine that will continue in 2009.

Newspapers and magazines folded, went entirely online and started to get the whole social media thing just a little more. I think that’s only going to continue in 2009. I will be stunned if by this time next year, more mainstream media has adopted some serious social media interaction and tools. If there’s an industry that seems like it should be picking this kind of interaction with readers up quickly, it’s the mainstream media, however they’re one of the industries that seem the most reluctant.

Companies and Brands are starting to get involved in social media… some of them are going it really well and others are …well, not. Here’s to brands and companies getting it more.

Advertising has taken a huge hit for 2009, and I anticipate that will continue… I think that the people are seriously tired of the spin and marketing messages that come with sales and want to know the honest truth about the product or service they’re looking at.

PR is the same as advertising at this point. It’s changing dramatically and people don’t believe the marketing hype of stories like they used to.

Even the way we communicate is changing.  More and more I find I pull away from email, towards SMS (text) messages and twitter, but even more so, if I need more than 140 or 160 characters, I pick up the phone. It’s faster, easier and accomplishes the same thing in minutes rather than hours. Partly, I think we’re moving away from the technology and going back to our “roots” so to speak, and partly I think people want to do things the most efficient way possible.

What do you think is going to come to the forefront for 2009? Are we going to get more simplified or are we going to move towards more and more social media tools and communications?