When the number of registered Facebook users reached over a billion and a half just very recently, many computer experts and statisticians made a conclusive verdict: the pinnacle of human communication is really here, and will forever give its full allegiance to digitization for the reason that it could never thrive and flourish without the aid of sophisticated technology.
But has the means of connecting together already reached its final evolutionary stage? Not likely. Many engineers and architects within the digital realm are just as relentless in building newer methods of communication inasmuch as users are untiringly clicking, browsing, and navigating through social media sites.
As these users immerse themselves in such activities each day, the demands for something better keeps on rising, which would eventually give birth to inevitable technological breakthroughs. So what will the future of social media be like a decade from now?
Because of the amazing features that the web browsers or internet devices in the future could be equipped with, the following scenarios could be very prevalent:
1. Every social media account will be like a TV channel.
With digital cameras getting cheaper as they increase in their imaging capabilities, more and more users are becoming their own directors and film crews in their own movies. Acknowledging this reality, social media engineers gave a fearless forecast: all social sites will have video streaming capabilities that will be on the same level as that of a typical TV station.
Thus, every registered user can transform his or her own social media account into a TV channel in the making – an indulgent web page with videos and home-made movies for everyone to see.
Such a possibility is already hinted by features today like Facebook live, and the fact that anyone today can follow or subscribe to any Facebook or Twitter page he likes. This makes it possible for that user to receive real-time updates about what a certain person is posting on his timeline in real-time.
This trend would most likely be still present in the next years, which would be surely exploited by web technologists. Seamless methods by which live or high-definition archived videos can be broadcast to various netizens will be invented, they have to be.
Since the brains of most people today are programmed to announce to the world what they're doing, where they're going, and what they're thinking, and would most probably be too lazy to type and post it in the next years, videoing their activities so the world can see them instantly would be highly trendy.
A typical social media page in less than a decade from now would probably look like YouTube or some video-streaming portal that we couldn't quite visually describe for now.
2. Electronic appliances will be able to post and tweet about your activities.
As mentioned above, people's brains nowadays are being rewired into developing one nasty habit: letting the world know about all the stuff they do with their lives as often as they can. Trivial or crucial, small or big, birth or death, they post it on the digital representations of their existence that we now call social media accounts.
If home appliances are really good at cutting our time doing household chores, why not let them post our activities on our social media timelines as well? This may sound a bit too far-fetched, but in a couple of years, it is really technically feasible.
By installing a social network OS into the electronic system of a computer-oriented home, a software agent could jot down all of the activities of the homeowners in the future. By then, posts like this would be very common: “baking some cookies while watching Game of Thrones,” or “dealing with nasty laundry while listening to 88.9 gemz FM.”
Tags and tweets like these would still be around, except that a microwave oven, a TV, and a radio are the ones posting it, not their owner. Now, how could such a creepy scenario take place? Simple, by letting the social network OS harness the electronic signals from the appliances involved and let them flow into a cellphone or computer on that home.
A special app would then generate the words that tell what the owner is doing, watching, or listening. The gathered data then gets uploaded to the internet where it is posted on the owner's social media timeline. This could be a real privacy-invader. But then, most people would just never care.
3. Social media site themes and interfaces will auto-customize.
You may not directly admit it, but what you've been searching and browsing on the net for the previous months or years are just plainly predictable. Internet merchants are aware of this and are actually implementing technical methods that can help you think faster (or prey upon you quicker) as you search for the stuff you are most passionate about in cyberspace.
It is already happening now. What's not happening yet however is a social media site that harnesses a truly smart Adaptive User Interface (AUI), one that can customize your account's theme and layout based on your browsing patterns. If you are into a certain niche like cookery, for instance, the interface of your page would shift into something with food-related motifs.
If you are into gardening or farming, the digital landscape that is your social media account would terraform into a virtual real-estate with a scenery conducive for livestock and vegetation. These web pages would be also capable of catering to the visual needs of those visually impaired.
Built-in computer cameras could be programmed to scan the user's eyes to detect some possible vision problems like color-blindness, far-sightedness, and near-sightedness. In effect, the computer's resolution or color scheme could readjust itself to make the projected images much clearer, in accordance with the visual capacity of the current user.
The varying navigational methods of various users could also be addressed. It is a known science that most readers and onlookers usually view a reading material or scan an area using the “left to right viewing habit.” However, some individuals are known to rebel against this.
That's why current web designers should consider designing an AUI that can rearrange the layout of a certain web page based on the navigating habits of a user. If that user has the habit of scanning a site in a speedy upward-downward manner, then a layout fit for that user should be loaded once he logs on.
If another user logs on and scans a page differently, then another layout or color scheme should be loaded for him. If these scenarios get implemented anytime soon, every social network session for every user is like being on a different site though it's just the same site all along.
Social media sites will still be very addictive in the future, and technologies that can make them even more addictive will surely be developed and implemented… to cater to the unquenchable desires of the people that live within the modern world.
The future is uncertain but who knows? The above scenarios could happen sooner than we think.
I like these ideas.. An like what @Lewiss said, i also can't wait the technology to download food for me 🤣🤣