The launch this week of Facebook Places in
the UK and a revamped Twitter marked a much-needed maturing of real-time
social media.
Sharing real-time information has up to this point been very
much about passing on news or recommendations, so we can quickly read
and consume what our peers think we would enjoy.
Ironically,
though, real-time has never felt very real. What both Places and the new
Twitter do is add a layer of context that brings the real-time
information into real life, making sharing more relevant for everyone,
users and brands.
Places will start to bring the idea of location-based updates or services to a more mainstream audience (nma.co.uk 17 September 2010). Although simple in its construction, it will become interesting as the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla use the API to create more interesting applications themselves. The context that Places gives is straitforward: by tying together the updates and social connections you create in Facebook, it creates the bridge between real-life interactions and those on social media.
At the same time, Twitter now provides a much richer experience that will ensure people spend more time on the site instead of using it as a springboard to others (nma.co.uk 15 September 2010). It now allows you to see a range of information about a tweet, such as what the user tweeted before and who has replied, better replicating the way we communicate offline.
One criticism of real-time services that’s always given by people who aren’t prolific users of either Twitter or Facebook is that they dont see the point. But the more context these services add or the more that sharing on these sites feels like normal offline conversations, the less we’ll hear this argument.
We know from many studies that social media use has hit the mainstream, but real-time hasn’t yet been as widely adopted or accepted. Brands are broadly embracing real-time for giving them an extremely powerful insight tool, but the more these services mature and grow, the more useful they will become.