The Noughties- the 'Social' Decade
So there go the noughties- the decade that digital came of age, that social media became the buzzword and the decade that the Internet became for most of us an essential life manager.
The social decade started with the rise of MySpace, which was then snapped up by Rupert Murdoch five years later for an overinflated half a billion dollars. MySpace's status as the new star of the Internet was taken by Facebook who now over have over 350m users worldwide- and who are still growing. Facebook's phenomenal growth has coincided with a serious drop in use and interest in MySpace- leaving Murdoch with an expensive headache. Facebook is yet to be significantly affected by the emergence of Twitter- which with 50m users is dwarfed by the blue giant, but which has had enough of an impact for Facebook to do a deal with it to integrate its real-time results and status updates.
I'm sure there's a directory of start-ups that came and went and another list of start-ups that launched and are still going strong but perhaps the biggest change and seismic shift has come in the form of Google.
Almost overnight, Google established itself as the search engine of choice for Internet users around the world but that was just the start.
Google is now for most the Internet.
It's the starting point whether they're looking for the latest news, ideas for their summer holiday, directions how to get to a restaurant or even
personal profiles on friends, prospective employees and colleagues. Its power and reach is phenomenal and all of this has been achieved without even cracking social networking or social search.
It has been watching for a while how Facebook and Twitter have become the defacto platform for real-time status updates, the spread of real-time information and news to a targeted audience and so in the latter stage of this year, it started to roll out real-time search; perhaps the biggest revolution in search to date.
The implications of real time search are huge not just for Google but for the Internet user and for brands and organisations who now lost what little control they had over what is published about them, said about them, linked about them or referenced about them. We've already seen this in the last few days with the real time results and storm around the Eurostar social media PR disaster and the negative buzz around the aborted British Airways strike.
So what does the next decade hold?
Well it's likely to be the decade that the Internet shifts from being free to being more freemium and premium- not that this will be an easy transition! There's also likely to be significant consolidation within the social space to improve the user experience and avoiding the need for multiple log-ins. Think OpenId but one which is universal and mass market friendly. There will be a number of high profile brand 'outings' who catch a sizeable and damaging cold because of real-time search and not being proactive towards it and managing their online reputations.
However, perhaps the biggest shift will be in overall user behaviour. We're already seeing people viewing less and less web pages and using search engines and their own networks to filter the vast amounts of information they're deluged with. Time is precious and consolidated spaces and feeds will become more important. Think a souped-up i-Google, which is 100% personalisable and which is as much an App-Store as it is a social environment. Google have tried with Google Wave but they've got a long way to go before it works and more importantly appeals to the mass market.
It has been a fascinating decade for me professionally as well a personally. Having started the decade as a well regarded business journalist on New Media Age, I went on to write for the MediaGuardian before joining Marketing where I was News Editor and then in the second half of the decade, I went on to establish a successful online marketing agency, Evolv Digital before riding the Setanta Sports rollercoaster as Head of Online Marketing for a brief stint.
I'm really excited about the next ten years and think for anyone either involved in the online industry or on the periphery of it that it offers huge opportunities, which could well prove to be the platform for fundamental change in both the way we live our lives and also the way we interact with brands and organisations.






