Besides being a partner, co-founder, web developer, and consultant at Pleth Networks, LLC, I have also found myself trying on the hat of “social networking evangelist” as of late. I feel that it is my responsibility to absorb as much knowledge as I can about the “going trends” that are out there today in order to effectively serve our clients.
One of the trends that I have been monitoring for the better part of 2 years is the rise of social networking (ex. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). This trend is unlike any other that I have witnessed in my 10 years in the industry. It’s not slowing down or giving birth to another popular explosion anytime soon either, it just keeps gaining momentum.
A few weeks ago I managed to get my partner Stephen to start using Twitter. He signed up for an account a while back but only recently started using it. He was extremely reluctant at first just like most of us who have been in this industry for a while, it’s new and we simply don’t understand it or really want to understand it, but once we actually do pick it up we run with it. We actually had a brainstorming session in Little Rock the other day w/ our partner Greg about some practical uses of Twitter integration for a few of our clients.
While Twitter has been a lot more reliable lately and gaining momentum and national attention through news networks like CNN‘s Rick Sanchez, Don Lemon, and Anderson Cooper who are now utilizing Twitter during their daily newscasts, the social network that I am keeping my eye on the closest is Facebook.
I feel like Facebook is best positioned to have the most impact on the future of the web in terms of ad revenues and overall traffic. I have watched Facebook grow to the point of almost being a web within the web. I personally devote 2 sessions of about 20 minutes each to checking my email and catching up with friends and business contacts. Over the past few months though I have witnessed some surprising growth from Facebook and have been seeing some pretty unreal numbers relating to it’s traffic and user base.
In order to position myself where I think I need to be in this crazy industry, I have been devoting a lot of time lately researching various forms of Facebook integration that can be utilized by my clients down the road when the need arises. I feel like Facebook is going to become a regular web development conversational piece with our prospective clients in the very near future. Currently I have two Facebook integration projects that I am working on, both are for non-profit organizations and I honestly think that both of them are going to benefit greatly from their presence on Facebook. As soon as I have something concrete to check out on either one of these projects I will post some notes here.
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