World's a Twitter....M3D leads the way

M³D= Massive Move to Mobile Devices

It is interesting to take a look back at recent history. During the late 1990s, massive investment in telecommunications laid the groundwork for the networks of today. The prices of phone calls have dropped to pennies, and the world has become a lot smaller. While I was at an equipment maker at the time and benefited from the investment, I also saw the devastation this left behind- scores of companies went away, and hundreds of thousands of people were left jobless.

News organizations have been giving away their intellectual property for free- something they are paying employees to procure. Now newspapers are closing down or are shrinking rapidly. Our only news source may be people typing blurbs or firing tinyurls on Twitter.

Which brings us to social networking. I attend conferences every year to present my academic work and also to network and meet old friends. Over the past year I have seen a number of conferences get canceled. However, LinkedIn boasts 35 million or so members, Twitter 6 million, Facebook 175 million and so on. Increasingly, the posts on these sites are originating from mobile devices. As the M³D tsunami ploughs through, will these replace the physical social networks? As they add to social networking, what will they subtract? WIll the tiny tweets replace good old "finding the dots" and connecting them to get a story? Stay tweened...