Is Social Assistance the Next Frontier of Social Media Innovation?

Do you feel overwhelmed by the huge amounts of information you consume online these days? Do you find it annoying that you have to monitor your company’s social media presence on multiple platforms? Well, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, this is the current state of social media.

According to Nova Spivak and his recent article for Mashable, we are entering into a new era of social media chaos that he labels as “Sharepocalypse.”

While he admits it will bring massive confusion, Spivak sees this as a great opportunity for new business ideas. Specifically startups that focus on ‘social assistance’ and the resources needed to help navigate social media.

 

What is Shareapocopalyse?

In short, Nova Spivak sees Sharepocalypse as a time of massive information overload where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of online friends share endless amounts of information with us across several social media platforms that we simply won’t be able to handle. According to Spivak, “Our lives will become more fragmented, we will lose productivity, and we’ll perpetually be playing catch up.”

Not fun.

 

Why is this happening?

Sharepocalypse is the result of the rapid expansion of social networks that allow us to share and track information.

But who’s to blame?

The social media platforms? Its users? Spivak believes it’s both:

• The big social platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin— are at fault for constantly trying to compete with one another, even though they are fundamentally different…
• …But it’s still the users that “feel obligated to maniacally juggle different apps and social networks just to keep up and be heard everywhere.” (I can attest to that because I’m one of them)

The huge amount of social messages coming from all different directions is causing users like us to shift from platform to platform, rather than taking the time to digest meaningful social messages.

 

What does this mean for the future social media environment?

There’s bad news and there’s good news.

Here’s the bad news:

• Social media chaos and clutter will continue because the major platforms will continue to compete, rather than differentiate. They will look to solve the clutter problem, but only in their immediate network.
• Brands will become even more confused, causing them to keep yelling louder and more often across all of the major platforms.

But, like I said, there is some good news:

• Amid all the chaos there will be a large need for brands to figure it all out and rework their social strategy… which is great news for social media consultants, whom, according to Spivak, “will have a total field day,” as a result of all the confusion.
• The rise of social assistance will create incredible opportunities for startups.

 

What is Social Assistance?

Spivak thinks it’s the “cutting edge of social media innovation.”

Social assistance is a new category of software and services formed from the Sharepocalypse-related needs that will help us with “managing our online relationships, tying our streams together, sifting through the noise, keeping up with what matters personally, finding who and what we need, and remaining productive.”

According to Spivak, social assistance will  likely include, but not be limited to, these newly established subcategories:

• Social Relationship Management (SRM): Services that help people create, organize and manage sets of social network relationships — for example, sets of people to follow and/or share with on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc.
• Social Awareness: Services that help people keep up with their social networks, especially among a user’s friends.
• Social Curation: Services that help people organize and make sense of their streams and messages.
• Social Personalization: Services that help people sift through the network noise for information most relevant to their particular needs and interests.
• Social Analytics: Services that help to measure online social behavior and trends, optimize engagement, monitor activity and communicate more appropriately.
• Social Automation: Services that help to automate activity in social networks, like automatically updating your status, helping to increase your influence, suggesting what to share, matchmaking, alerting, and using bots to intelligently interact with and assist users.

 

Conclusion

I see the need for social assistance TODAY.  The information overload is very evident, I feel it every day of my life as I am in a perpetual state of catching up to the newest information and social trends. I can imagine how lost small businesses and brands are feeling these days—which is exactly why the demand for social media consultants, who can bring clarity to businesses, is skyrocketing (check out craigslist if you don’t believe me).

However, I want to end this post with your thoughts:

If you’re a social media consultant, or someone who knows the environment well, I would love to hear your opinions on these few questions:

-       Do you think the idea of social assistance is the new frontier of social media innovation?

-       Do you think there is indeed a social messaging information overload?

-       How do you keep track of all your social activity?