The End of the Social Media Era?

Are we facing the end of the social media era?

Justin Kistner, an analyst at Webtrends, reports that the social media phase of the Web will peak in 2012, with the next big thing coming right on its heels in 2015. Kistner says we're in the Era of Social Media, the third era of the Web (after new media and Web 2.0). Facebook is a huge driver of online traffic and sends more hits to news sites than Google, he reports. In addition, social media has surpassed porn as the number one Internet activity.

However, based on Internet trends and the life cycle of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis, the social craze may soon decline, he says, though he does acknowledge that it actually may peak later than 2012. And it's possible that Facebook and Twitter may continue to evolve to meet users' changing needs in unexpected ways.

So what would the decline of social media mean for federal agencies, who are just now starting to use these tools regularly and for broad purposes? Government isn't the quickest to pick up on new trends, so how will quick turnover impact communication strategies?

During a Thursday hearing of the the House Oversight Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., joked about social media's popularity and the challenges it poses for federal record-keeping:

"God help us if Twitter becomes a primary form of communication," she said.