INSURANCE 2.0

Social media is mainstream in few industries, but definitely hasn’t made its way into insurance space. Few companies like Direct Line have experimented with community creation around Tea helps people in emergency. That idea never took off and overall its been gloomy. 2010 might be different as more and more insurance businesses understand the importance of it and following on the success of comparethemarket case study.

The following 5 areas will be the biggest growth areas in social media for 2010.

Location Based Applications

These applications could be web based, mobile based or any other interactive platform. Users are getting used to news and information coming to them rather they having to reach out for them. Twitter launched geotagging service so users can precisely find the source of the tweet on the planet. The potential of creating a whole new social media platform is low but potential to use the existing platforms and leverage them into bespoke new ideas is high.

Augmented Reality Applications

Most AR applications in 2009 were basic simple experiment to showcase the true potential of AR. There are quite few applications which show you nearest tube stations in London or nearest banks, coffee shops, restaurants, petrol stations etc. They are cool, but of low utility, shaky screens and not the best user experience. AR applications of new breed will take over our lives in 2010 and it will practically go mainstream by summer. Few major brands like Bacardi are already investing in AR and I don’t see some daring insurance businesses lagging behind. Most AR applications are marketing gimmicks, but some high utility everyday use type applications are on its way.

Social Search will grow

Google is not getting into trouble but will loose market share. Search engines taking social media criteria into consideration will gain market share. It doesn’t mean Google wont change its code to be more competitive. Business models of user reviews, facebook and twitter has had a huge impact on how we treat information these days. Search engines will start taking this into account when ranking pages. Facebook bought friendfeed to get involved in real time search. Microsoft’s Bing introduced few social features and are eating away some of Google’s market share.

The Fourth Screen Revolution

2010 is the year of the mobile. More and more applications would be accessed using mobile. Bandwidths will improve. Smartphone market penetration will surpass normal handsets. Growth of data intensive handsets like iPhone and BlackBerry will naturally influence the users to access more information when on the move. Businesses which wont a defined mobile strategy for 2010 will loose market share and will be reactive followers in 2011.

Enterprise level 2.0 applications

Few major businesses might evolve to create enterprise level solutions for bigger businesses to manage the social technologies

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