Reflections on the future of social networks

Have you ever wondered what the Internet and social networks will look like in the near future? I think that the majority of Dear Habr's readers will respond positively, and some of them not only think, but also directly participate in the processes of creating the Internet of the future. This article is intended for them in the first place, although it may be equally interesting for others to reflect on this topic. In the article, I propose to abstract from technology and speculate mainly about the concepts of the development of the Internet and social networks.

Modern tendencies

Every day, the world wide web reminds me more and more of a self-organizing universe that is evolving with wild speed. And although this system does not yet have full-fledged artificial intelligence, the beginnings of its creation are already beginning to appear in it (for example, the project Intelligence Realm, the virtual interlocutor of Elbot, or Akinator reading thoughts). I have no doubt that the day will come when the Turing test will be passed and the Internet will become an indispensable assistant from a functional tool, and for some there may be a friend. And this day is not far off! But do not forget - What / Who is behind all this. Of course, these are communities of people. Communities united by common ideas, goals and interests that are willing to spend their time and resources to implement these ideas. Therefore, every day more and more social networks appear on the Internet, their functionality is becoming ever wider, and their participants are gradually turning from consumers into active content creators. Wikipedia, YouTube and of course Habrahabr are vivid examples.

Problems

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It seems that development is moving in the right direction, but one problem arises: in every social network there is a need to register. Perhaps only software developers for storing passwords benefit from this. People looked at this outrage and came up with a very useful piece called OpenID. However, the reality is that today not all resources accept it. It is of course very convenient - once you authenticate with the OpenID provider to surf through your favorite sites and communities, but there is a fly in the ointment. First, if you think about security, everything becomes not so bright. You need to completely trust your provider and store your OpenID authorization data as the apple of your eye! Otherwise, having obtained your username / password, the attacker will have access to absolutely all sites that accept OpenID. And secondly, another problem remains unresolved - the inability to communicate with users from different social networks. And more and more situations arise when Vasya, Masha, Peter and Kenny are in Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte, Facebook and MySpace respectively, while the snowboarding party communicates in LiveJournal, and the best minds in the field of IT on Habré;) Not very convenient, agree?

Development alternatives

I propose to think about it in order to understand what alternative ways of evolution of social communities can be created. In my opinion, the most obvious option is only one - the creation of a global network community (let's call this GSN network - the global social network), which is one level higher than all other communities and aggregates their data. Those. it should be some kind of shell that allows you to collect heterogeneous data and present them in a user-friendly form. For example, the creators of Digsby embody this idea only at the level of messaging, I'm talking about global aggregation, including blogs, media storage, geoservices and Wiki. Those. full mashup! With a fully customizable interface! For example: Vasya logs into his GSN account, turns on Vkontakte player and starts looking at pictures from Masha’s last trip to India posted on Picasa with links to Google maps and immediately writes comments to her on Facebook. And by posting a video on YouTube, he can send a link to it at once to all his friends from all social networks. Those. the ultimate goal is to create a single entry point for working in social networks for those who need it (someone may need only one social network or only email in general). The idea is good, but without the interest of the social networks themselves and the availability of open APIs, this is problematic. So - what can they be interested in? Here they are, two key motivators:

• Material benefits
• Empowerment

But how can you expand the capabilities of social networks and give them the opportunity to earn even more green papers?

Third dimension

The answer is in another dimension ... in the 3rd! Yes, yes, fans of Second Life are not in vain on their guard, it is the 3D interface that can add a huge amount of new features to social networks! You and I are used to moving and interacting in 3 dimensions, so 3D GSN provides tremendous opportunities for communication, self-expression, learning and interaction. This is not a flat 2D avatar, but its three-dimensional projection, not an ordinary chat, but a virtual reality for voice communication, not a personal page, but a personal apartment. And the list can be continued ... I am already silent about the game component, happy farmer and others like them! MMORPGs have a rest with the right approach ... After all, prospects are opening up for creating a global MMORPG, for which it’s not enough not to pay, but on the contrary, it will be possible to earn real money in it! Well and one more important moment - 3D easily turns into 2D we are used to for viewing photos, reading mail and news.

So, I will list the main points that will help to better present how this might look like:
- 3D GSN can be accessed from any social network that is part of the GSN community, while the user sees all his friends who are online in at least one social network. network. The interface of the shell and the look of the avatar are completely customizable.
- The world of GSN 3D is created by the users themselves and interested companies. Here it is necessary to stop in more detail. First, I would suggest creating a model of a real 3D world with reference to Google Earth. Those. joint efforts would gradually form a 3-dimensional model of our beloved planet Earth. Secondly, users should be able to create their own fantastic worlds, this can be implemented on other planets. Thirdly, the motivation for creating new objects is the possibility of selling them and getting real incomes.
- The possibility of voice communication, audio and video conferences, training lectures and meetings.
- The division of areas of the world into common, private and game.
- The presence of bots with the beginnings of artificial intelligence and various functionalities: assistance in mastering the virtual world, teachers of various disciplines, librarians, geographers, etc.

Now about the material component:
Users from any social network that are part of the GSN community have a personal electronic wallet at their disposal. Money from these wallets are accepted for payment in 3D GSN. In this case, with each monetary operation of the user, the social network receives interest. In addition to sales of virtual things, trading floors for real things and services can be opened. Up to currency exchanges. In addition, GSN community member networks receive a percentage of advertising revenue, which will be plentiful in all sorts of companies. In fact, it can turn into a new type of advertising with the ability to "touch" a 3-dimensional copy of the product and immediately order it. Participation in various gaming contests can also be paid. And this is not a complete list of possible sources of income.

About the disadvantages

In my opinion, besides any trifles that seem to be unusual for a certain circle of users of the interface, 3D GSN has only one major drawback, but it is so huge that it overshadows all others: the described system is so resource-intensive that it ensures comfortable work of users with such a monster with The current level of development of IT-technology - a very non-trivial task. And first of all, everything depends on the bandwidth of data transmission channels. But, in my opinion, the problem is solved. The same Second Life demonstrates quite acceptable performance on my 16 Mbit / s channel. Although, to be honest, I spent quite a bit of time researching SL, and the number of users in SL cannot be compared with the number of users of social networks. But with the imposition of a number of restrictions and proper optimization, the expected result can be achieved.

findings

At once I will make a reservation that everything written above is a figment of my imagination, i.e. subjective view on how this could be. Therefore, it would be very interesting to hear feedback from consonants / dissenters with adjustments and additions to the proposed scenario.
Of course, the article does not claim to be complete. To avoid the effect of “many books”, it describes only the basic principles of the possible development of social networks. Outside were such topics as the description of the virtual world shell interface, the content moderation system, a detailed scheme of monetization of the processes occurring in 3D GSN, optimization of the system algorithms for comfortable work with it, and much more. The main goal was only to determine the vector of further development of social networks and their interfaces.
Everything that is described here is much easier to imagine for those who have seen at least once what Second Life is . This is truly a grand and dignified project. With proper refinement, it was he who could become that very GSN. Now SL has one significant difference - its users are able to communicate anonymously. This gives an additional degree of freedom to communicate. But nothing prevents the introduction of an additional service in 3D GSN (which, by the way, can also be paid), allowing you to enable the "anonymous" mode.
And although Second Life is a truly ambitious project, in my humble opinion, it will not have enough performance to become a full-fledged 3D GSN. But there is a monster who can handle it! Yes, of course, this is Google! They have practically everything for this: a huge staff of talented programmers, colossal clusters of servers connected to thick channels, and groundwork in all the required areas. In fact, it’s enough for them to modify their Lively and the 3D GSN shell is ready. It will only be necessary to develop optimal schemes of interaction with all interested parties.
So, according to my beliefs - 3-dimensional interaction interfaces will fill the Internet very soon. And the ideal development option is to create a single global social network in the virtual 3D world. In addition to the advantages listed above, this is another step towards eliminating barriers between people from different countries and nationalities.
With the advent of 3D GSN, various companies will only need to join this community, there will be no need to reinvent their bicycle. And the lack of competition, as in the case of the Wiki, will not negatively affect the quality, because most of the content will be produced by the users themselves.
But, unfortunately, another option is possible, when the largest social networks, which have enough resources for such a project, will realize this idea independently. And in this case, we will again have to make a choice - to communicate with Masha Vkontakte-3D or with Vasya in Odnoklassniki-3D. And there is nothing left to do but wait for the next turn of history and the appearance of 4D GSN, where it will be possible to rewind the time ago, when all users communicated only by email, or even further - in the Middle Ages or in the Stone Age, but this is another story ...