AOL have bought Bebo even managing to repel the apparent attempts by Google to get a piece of the action to bolster Orkut.

After my post a couple of days ago about AOL trying to update their brand maybe I was a little premature saying they weren’t causing much of a buzz online. Buying one of the big 3 social media sites is not to be underestimated. However some people are already suggesting that maybe AOL getting involved at this stage in the game might mean that the social media bubble is about to burst.

I can’t see this by any sense of the word. Social media is just being to mature in some areas. Back in February of this year the decline of Facebook users was widely reported as negative. I personally saw this as just a change in user habits. You always get the initial excitement about the latest trend and Facebook was no exception. However the casual user of Facebook could quite happy drop off the network once they get bored that their list of friends are have grown tired of the aimless wall-posts.

The real social users have Facebook as a tool to extend their social lives. I myself don’t logon half as much as I used to - my status can stay the same for days on end. However when I’m planning to meet up or have an event on the cards Facebook is my communication tool of choice. Maybe this is because many of my friends are scattered across the UK rather than being local but all the same it works well for me.

Of course there is the inevitable photos and videos uploaded after the event and for someone who has never been one for collecting photo albums (my entire University life was contained in two rolls of film) I’ve now got far more to look back at - surely not a bad thing?…then again.

So I’m sure the user trends show even more seasonal use of Facebook over time. December was very busy, January very quiet - much like everyone social calendar. Coincidence? Not called social media for nothing. Just time has led to an amplification of this trend.

I don’t think the social media sites are blind to this change in activity either. Facebook are on the verge of a major facelift in the near future. From the screen shots I’ve seen they are trying to make the interface work for all the different types of users that frequent the site - keep those bloody applications separate please!

So no the bubble ain’t for bursting. The question is will AOL make a good go of Bebo or will Bebo go the way of AOLs other online shopping trips?

I’ve read a fair bit about how social networking is going to replace search but I’ve been pretty sceptical about this so far. You have to meet my friends to understand this - we’d have trouble at a pub quiz (I’m joking guys honestly)!

Of course in actual fact it’s not the more closed social systems that this is referring to and therefore it wouldn’t just be a small group that would be suggesting how to perform open heart surgery if that’s what takes your fancy.

I can see that social networking could benefit search side by side almost acting as a checking algorithm against adverse manipulation. This already happens to a certain extent and I can only see this spread increasing. It’s is all well and good for apps like digg and del.icio.us but this has more far reaching consequences when it comes to Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Privacy issues have been highlighted a lot in the media at the moment so the data within these walls should remain private and therefore unavailable to tap into.

However imagine the power of all this hidden information if a way of anonymizing the data could take place.

I’m still interested to see the next Google and social media might well spawn it so keeps those eyes pealed maybe it might be The Mechanical Zoo which when it launches claims to be a “social search”?

In any case there are still issues here with fact, fiction and opinion. Rumours spread like wildfire on the Internet so theoretically relying on the even less formal conversations within social media sites might actually end with less accurate information returned?

There are loads of social media applications floating about in the vastness of the Internet. Most will disappear into obscurity but a select few will hit the mainstream and will become a household name.

Now I must separate my interpretation of popular and mainstream. Facebook, MySpace and Bebo can truly claim to be mainstream purely from the perspective that they are heavily used by many varying groups of people. Generally speaking here mainstream needs to include people who aren’t just linked with technology and the Internet in some way. This is not to say that these people don’t use these applications of course (although there is another post to come here about the relative coolness to popularity of social media within some quarters). Quite often however people involved with online industries are aware of many more social media tools than Joe Public and this is where the popular social media applications come in.

Twitter is a good example of a popular application that hasn’t as yet gone mainstream. There are many evangelists of Twitter including colleagues of mine and a large number of the Birmingham Bloggers however I’m not sold that Twitter will be able to go mainstream. Sorry guys.

So back to the original question - why the difference? I think this purely has to be judged from the perceived advantages to people over existing technology. Technologists (if that’s a good term to cover them) are always interested in the newest technology and for the most part will try out far more applications than your average Internet user. They are also to a certain extent likely to be more forgiving of growing pains within a service. Your average user is more likely to be inpatient and want to see instant advantages without a lot of hassle and what’s more they want to feel like it something completely new otherwise why bother?

Going back to the Twitter example I can see some excellent uses for the system even for people outside of the technologists camp (thanks to Mark and Kev here for the discussion on Friday). One of Mark’s examples was Universities using Twitter as a broadcast system for cancelled lectures or similar. Certainly Twitter could handle this well but the issue here is that the current user-base isn’t large enough for this to be an effective answer. Now Universities could insist that students are registered for Twitter and have tweets sent to their mobile phones in much the same way as I was required to regularly check my emails for announcements (as reminded by Mark such a long time ago - cheeky get). However there are a couple of missing links here in my opinion.

Firstly someone has got to be enthusiastic enough about the service to sell this to colleagues to even get to the point of deployment. Secondly and most importantly they’ve got to evaluate the additional hassle to get students to register (and chase the ones that don’t). Now again Mark stepped in to say that this could be bundled into the various induction activities which is true. But deep down I know for the most part that this is a lot more long and drawn out process than just taking the student’s mobile number (that is probably already known from enrollment) and using an SMS service to send announcements direct.

Of course I’m sure there will be exceptions to the rule from people particularly enthusiastic about a service but generally speaking there must be a major perceivable benefit to the end user. For this reason many applications remain used by a niche group.

I’d be interested to see other people’s opinions (possibly to change mine) not just about Twitter but also other applications currently not mainstream. Although I would be interested in any suggestions for Twitter uses that might swing my opinion.

As usual I’m bound to change my mind a couple of months down the road and if I do Mark will be waiting!