What will 2008 be about?

Last couple of years it was all about blogging. We can see that blogging is changing the nature of journalism. Bloggers became so powerful that even old-media started to cite them. The phenomena of citizen-journalism emerged. Bloggers even get the press credentials for various events (from political to commercial).

But through this year something else started to move and it is moving fast. We definitely can see it as a snowball effect.

What is the ball bringing?

Social Media. Social Networking Sites. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, LinkedIn, Hi5, Bebo, Orkut or Tagged. And many other (smaller ones) who fight for their share.

Social media are all over the press (in the old media and in the new media). This new services are getting a lot of publicity and attention.

As comScore revealed with it's study, there is a good reason for this huge attention. Figures which were revealed by comScore show that the ball is rolling (Facebook increased the total number of unique visitors, from Jun 2006 to Jun 2007, for 270%).

What is the answer to question from the subject of this post? You definitely know it by now.

Yes. Bingo.

2008 will be about the social media.

And we should go out-there and explore the functioning and engage, because we will need them.

Why? Sunny Smith from Spontana wrote in a comment, where some other statistics for social media was posted, that:

"the applications to marketing would be limitless - especially since these sites really lure folks into sharing all of their interests and preferences - movies, sports, and all of their vitals - age, location, education level. There will be a certain amount of falsification, but overall I think that the majority of people are truthful and genuine. The data from these sites have huge potential both in the aggregate, as well as the micro-level, for both mass media, and direct marketing - it's just a matter of time until the big business gets rolling!"

Let's roll!