What does the future of social media look like to you?
As digital publishers and audience development professionals, it’s important to keep an eye out for changes that take place throughout social media channels. With massive audiences spending time on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, looking towards the future can help us better develop and serve our audience members.
The first story of significance is about SEOmoz acquiring Twitter analytics company Followerwonk. Will the importance of social signals have a greater impact on search results going forward? Larry Kim, founder of WordStream, and Google’s Matt Cutts seem to think so.
In an article on MediaPost, Kim stated, “Whenever we have a new article with a decent amount of social interaction, it seems to catapult the page to the first page of results for keyword searches directly related to the post.”
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Need more assurance that social will play a bigger role in the future? Google recently acquired Frommer, a brand known for guidebooks and reviews related to travel. Social commentary, which will most likely focus on reviews and recommendations, is clearly a priority to Google. SEOmoz also released data last week that shows URLs receiving more tweets averaged more inbound links.
The next Twitter?
Biz Stone and Evan Williams, the cofounders of Twitter, recently displayed Medium, a new publishing platform.
Although not groundbreaking, Medium combines elements of other social sites like Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Digg. Users can rate the content and the highest-rated content will receive better visibility.
As companies aligned with search engines dive deeper into social, and more social platforms develop, we are looking at the need to communicate more effectively through all the right platforms.
