Facebook, Twitter will lead the way in 2011

Facebook and Twitter, the reigning kings of the NewNet, will set the standards for technologies like social media and real time feeds in 2011. These two young net behemoths, with their growing revenues and technology advances and influence, were two of the biggest impact players last year, and are sure to lead the way this year.



Anyone who has at least used the internet a few times is probably aware of the growing presence of Facebook. But Facebook, while it is a billion dollar business boasting more than 500 million unique users, makes far less revenue from its users than Yahoo and Google, both of which sell many more ads per user.

Facebook needs to make more money from big brand advertisers so in 2011 it will enrich the creative palette of Facebook Pages and improve integration with off-site targeting. Second, Facebook will focus on communications and let third party developers handle the better applications. Facebook Groups and Messaging are evolving towards an integrated hub.

Twitter’s need to make more money, make use of its data, and make its information feed more useful to users will drive its activities in 2011. Twitter last year gave up on social commerce and is now just experimenting with advertizing.

In 2011 Twitter is likely to increase its data licensing and focus on expanding and building out features, perhaps introducing a topics filters option to make the website more flexible, and more addictive. This approach will delay the opportunity for real time advertizing, but ad formats will be better targeted and richer.