5 Era's of the Social Web

Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior Analyst at Forrester has written a fascinating piece in his Web Strategy blog - which is derived from research into Social Web Development at the macro level where he envisaged five era's

The Five Eras of the Social Web: 

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

The era's are not sequential, but overlap and the research suggests we are currently in the second moving into the third. I'd say this accords with my view of the Societal Web at a Macro level, in other words we less than half way through the development of what will happen and the pace of change is quickening. What's interesting for us in Societal Web terms is what this Macro level journey means at the individual, business, entrepreneur, corporation and governmental level and that's something we'll come back to in future posts.

Very intersting stuff - You can read more at DestinationCRM