Lets just have a think about something here. If thats is, we are in doubt about the importance of social media to businesses today. Lets start by defining social media not just as a collection of tools and sites that individuals use online to communicate with each other, but the sociological imperative that it has become by getting people all around the world to meetup, share thoughts, opinions, form groups/sociaties, instigate actions, react, and in some cases power revolutions.
Lets map out the history of social media to allow us, as a minimum, a panorama of the passing of recent history, and at best, an insight of how this could inform the evolution of what’s to come.

1971 – First email sent from one computer to another by Ray Tomlinson initiating the use of the “@” sign to separate the names of the user and the user’s machine.
1979 – First copies of early browsers distributed via Usenet and early bulletin board.
1994 – GeoCities was launched and was the first networking site that would allow users to create there own websites. (Subsequently bought by Yahoo! in 2004)
1995 – The launch of TheGlobe.com allowed users to publish there own content and interact with those that had similar interests.
1997 – AOL Instant Messager is launched revolutionising instant realtime communication.
1997 – Also saw the launch of sixdegrees.com which allowed you to create your own profile and start linking with friends.
In 2000 everything went back to square one when the Dot-com bubble burst and all confidence in the sector was lost.
2002 – Friendster pioneered the connection of real friends online. After the successful adoption by users all around the world MySpace follows in its coat tails to build social networking site.
2003 – Saw the launch of LinkedIn the business-oriented social networking site
2004 – Facebook is launched and within the first month 19,500 Harvard College students join.
More than 500 million active users. (20th February 2011)
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
Average user has 130 friends.
People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
2006 – Twitter is launched, enabling microblogging.
175 Million registered users. (as of September 14, 2010)
95M Tweets are written per day.

Looking at the timeline I believe that anything before 2003 was essential, but inconsequential today. As younger and younger users and consumers start to discuss brands within social networks, and then share opinions on them, the business imperative is now here to engage with them. There is now a conversation that is taking place about your brand whether you like it or not.
The increased use of microblogging (Twitter, Kontain, Present.ly, Tumblr, etc) and the new offerings and utilities like full ecommerce stores within Facebook and full transaction sites via mobile open huge opportunities for businesses to engage with their market in a new way. It is impressive how quickly users have adopted to new technology and created a bond with there prefered method of communication or social network.
The interesting elements now, within these networks are location, profiling, targeted (search) results and sharing. With sharing I mean the dissemination of your data, with your concent, shared by you (as a user) for open consumption within your group of friends. Google Social Search just that, by logging in to Google and searching your search results it will surface your contacts comments within results (if they have in the past commented on what you search for). How will these elements affect with mobile?
The opportunities with mobile can be very location based. This superimposed with ultra-local news, contacts recommendations and for example, their recent purchasing footprint around you. The landscape around you will become a geological map with multiple contours of emotion, brands and realtime data streaming.
Virtual brand parks will pop-up, the land-grab, is well on its way, and ultra-local advertising too will be prevalent. Lets not forget location targeted advertising is four times more successful than regular advertising, no wonder the advertising world is buzzing with excitement about location.
So why am I sharing these thoughts with you? Well if your in the brand business you need to know whats going on with regards to social, mobile and social+mobile. If your not, you need to know whats coming up and what to expect around you very soon. Don’t be surprised when you next buy something recommended by a contact through a search result or via a push notification.
And then, of course, there is gaming….
At Miura we work very closely with B2C and B2B brands that need to be one step ahead. Others that don’t we nudge affectionately.