By David Neuman

In 2009 we witnessed the rise in popularity of Social Media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn,  and Ning, but what will see the most success in 2010?  Listed below are five Social Media tools / sites to keep an eye on for this year.

1. FourSquare – FourSquare is a location specific Social Media website that allows users to “Check in” to any location using a mobile device.  If a user checks into a location more often than any other person, they become the “mayor” of that place.  Might sound trivial and pointless, but more and more businesses are starting to use this to incentivize people to come to their place of business more often.  A place might offer the mayor a free appetizer, buy one get one free, etc. (some places only require that you check in with FourSquare to receive some sort of incentive / discount).  This site could have a huge impact on brand loyalty if businesses use it properly.  Just to show you how much this has been growing, FourSquare recently has teamed up with Bravo TV as a partnership (source: NY Times)

2. Google Buzz – Although sporting a completely unoriginal name (Yahoo! Buzz already did the “lets just add the word buzz next to our brand name thing, when they released their Social Bookmarking site), you can’t dismiss a Social Media tool that’s under the Google name.  Basically Google Buzz will turn your Gmail into a Social Networking platform.  With Google Buzz, you have the ability to follow your contacts (yet another new platform copying Twitter), publish to your friends or publically, share photos, connect to other Social Media sites, and see updates in real time (real time is going to be a big thing with Google this year..not just with Google Buzz).  It’s too early to tell if this is going to be a success or a flop (I have a feeling it will be somewhere in between), but again its a Google product which is hard to ignore.

3.  iPhone Apps – Nothing new..we’ve all heard of iPhone applications and that they have been growing in popularity, but 2010 will be the year that they explode.  2010 will see a rise in mobile marketing as more and more people continue to purchase smart phones.  The expression “there’s an app for that” will hold true even more in 2010.  I’m not recommending you create an application just to be a part of an already saturated market (especially since they can be pricey to create), but its definitely something to consider in the coming year.  iPhones will be the most popular followed by Droids, and then Blackberry.

4. Dlvr.it - This isn’t so much of a new tool that’s going to change the world of Social Media (think Twitter last year and possibly FourSquare this year), but I’m a huge fan of it so far.  Dlvr.it is maybe a month old, but it’s starting to already gather the attention of Twitter and Facebook users. If you’re familiar with Twitterfeed, you can view Dlvr.it as a far superior  version of that tool.  You can submit an RSS feed to Dlvr.it and have it automatically populate it to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Also, you have the ability to add custom text before and after the tweet (I usually do this in the form of hashtags). This isn’t new from Twitterfeed’s capabilities, but what sets Dlvr.it apart is a few things.  First, the Tweet or Facebook post is a LOT cleaner.  Twitterfeed would show this post, for example, on Twitter as “Five Social Media Tools to Watch in 2010 – Prime Visibility Five Social MediaPrime”..basically just filling up empty space.  Dlvr.it, however, would show it as “Five Social Media Tools to Watch in 2010 – Prime Visibility”.  Also, dlvr.it has a slue of analytical information such as totla clicks, how many clicks were from followers, where they are located, among other features.  Again, not a life changing tool, but one that should grow in popularity this year.

5.  Augmented Reality – Not a tool, not a site, but a feature expected to take off in 2010.  Yelp.com has already used this with their iPhone app (and it’s pretty impressive).  The idea of augmented reality is to create a realistic experience for the user by the use of virtual computer-generated imagery.  Using the Yelp example, if you’re looking for a restaurant in your area, all you need to do is hold up your phone and it will give you an actual view of the street that you’re on.  The impressive part is that the application will show you a real life view of a building a half mile away and point you in the right direction (like a realistic glorified google maps or mapquest).  This type of functionality will be growing rapidly in 2010 so definitely something to keep your eye on.

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 6:31 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.