At the Web 2.0 Summit last month Mark Zuckerberg stated "I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before."
It's certainly true for me. Today it's not hard to find pictures of my new house, the baby, and where I am working today online. Just two years ago I would not have imagined blogging, telling people I'm getting my haircut on Twitter or, quite frankly, that anyone would care. Now I see family members and friends who were once paranoid of the Web doing the same things. I have a few hundred people getting updates on random events in my life or articles I found interesting between LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and this blog. In the past six months my mom, uncles, former bosses (SVP and C-level execs) and other co-workers have been jumping in.
There a few obvious implications. On an entirely personal note, in many ways I am closer now to a larger circle of people even though I interact with them in person or via phone less frequently. I know more about many of them after interacting online in some way than I did when we sat next to each at work.
On a professional basis it means online and social media marketing become absolute requirements. Particularly if your product or service is consumer in any way. This may seem obvious, but I still run into many people who think of this as a niche market or specialty. If you are a marketer, word of mouth and online marketing will be table stakes requirements for most jobs. At a minimum all marketers at all levels of the company should be active online themselves.
What will Zuckerberg's law mean for you personally in two years? What will it mean for your company?
