Posted by: Amanda Rick, Account Coordinator
Members of the 90octane team attended the University of Colorado’s October Smart Lunch, where guest speaker Dave Morin, a CU grad and early member of the Facebook team, spoke about the evolution of social media and the ways it will continue to change in the future.
Morin began his presentation by taking attendees through a brief history of communication, pointing specifically to how the Internet and social media have allowed for accelerated growth in this area. This set the stage for the remainder of the presentation by putting emphasis on the idea that change will continue, and quickly, so we must open our minds to the possibility of new ideas.
He contended that many of today’s most popular Facebook features came from identifying and capitalizing on user behavior patterns. When the company saw that users were changing their profile pictures several times a day, it created a place for them to upload an album of their photos and tag their friends. And when Facebook noted that its most popular page on the site was one that showed recent friend updates, they created a news feed where users can go to see what their friends are doing and saying on the site. Reacting quickly to user trends allows Facebook to evolve its offerings, keeping members interested and engaged.
While Morin was fairly vague about his newest venture, Path, a start-up company with Napster founder Shawn Fanning, he was clear about where the inspiration for it came from. Projections (like those found in Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report below) show that the amount of mobile Internet users will exceed desktop users by the year 2014, opening up a multitude of opportunities to expand the ways in which we use social media.
Source: Morgan Stanley
Morin discussed new capabilities such as linking your mobile device’s GPS technology to social networks and accessing information about common interests and connections of those located near you at any given time. He urged the audience to be open to all the possibilities that the move towards mobile allows. In fact, he predicts that someday we will look back on sitting in “a building” in front of “glowing screens” and laugh about how it used to be. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
