In the world today, people live two lives in one lifetime, one in the ecosystem and the other online!

Social networking has brought about a revolution in the way of life. Any person can be accessed from any corner of the world. Easy accessibility and better communication is truly ensured. People a thoroughly connected at any hour of the day. This is social networking today and tomorrow shall only be brighter and better!

Today, social networking sites have replaced the actual person to person contact in terms of both work and leisure. The strength of certain top lists social networking sites is as follows:

100 million+ members. 17% of Orkut consists of Indians.

190 million+ users tweeting 65 million times a day

60 million+ active professionals

400 million+ active users, 1.5 million business pages.

What makes social networking that big a thing is basically the money involved. For instance, consider Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of facebook is the youngest billionaire in the world! The entire concept of a virtual world and people being a part of it is also far more exciting. It is almost like another part of the same life!

With advanced social networking, advertising and marketing have now taken a completely virtual nature. People see an advertise on a small column in their social networking sites, if they like the product, they follow the instructions and buy it. This makes it beneficial for both, the buyers and the sellers. Here, social networking sites act like an agent and it also makes a major revenue source for these sites and suppliers.

This is an example of advertising using social networking sites.

Its a win-win situation as both the buyers, sellers as well as the agent (the site) are all benefited.

The money involved in a social networking site is what drives the entire system on social networking. Here are certain statistics:

1.Facebook is currently valued to 25 billion dollars.

2.Twitter is valued to 10 billion dollars.

3.Orkut is valued to 19.52 billion dollars.

Enterprise social network users will be able to create a sophisticated reputation for themselves through which business can be expanded as with the population increasing in the virtual world, getting there first is all that counts.

If a particular column says, Levis announces a peace rally in Pune on 22nd March 2011. An invite for everybody to join the cause. In this case, it is their reputation that is enhanced because even if ignored, at least 1/100th part of users have noticed the add and the brand associated to it. This creates a give and take relationship between the brand, the site and the user. Thus, it acts as a reputation builder for the entrepreneur.

Brand----Site----User

At the present hour, the rate at which people are getting themselves attached to social networking is unbelievable. These days, even in college almost every 2nd student is on one social networking site or other. Sooner or later, it will be the virtual world that will represent a person completely and the day is not far off when every persons background check can be goggled.

Augmented reality is a concept that includes a combination of the real world, virtual graphics, text and in certain cases, even sound. The future of social networking is an instance of augmented reality.

As per statistics, it has been found that about 5 years from now, social networking sites will be accessed mostly through mobile phones more than computers. As time passes, various innovations and transformations are seen in the mobile industries and internet services. Here is what a future I-phone will look like:

-In the future, social networks will be like air , augmented reality will be the next big thing.

-Every person will have a virtual existence and a complete information of every person will be available on the internet.

-By 2015, 5 billion people will be connected to an ever simplifying network of mobile, fixed and broadband connections.

-Various sensors will evolve in mobile phones which can trace a particular location or a persons face and display complete information about.

-Mobile phones will act as key devices for social networking with their advanced features.

Assuming amazing resolutions, more accurate GPS, facial and object recognition, this is how social networking would be in the future.(content from http://matthewbuckland.com/)

Social networking will be related to places and not just the people. (content from http://matthewbuckland.com/)

Every coin has two side. As technology advances and there is so much of openness and easy accessibility to any person, is it time to say goodbye to privacy? We may evolve into a society thats highly transparent and accountable. But then again, we could become a paranoid and distrustful of society, worrying about what our friends or neighbours will find out about us. However, this part is for the future to choose for themselves.

Abundance ofScarcity ofNew products and servicesTrusted opinionsNumber of connectionsActual relationshipsConnectivityPrivate spaceMachine intelligenceHuman creativity

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