Trend Briefing covering "MASS MINGLING"
alesaavedra 
saavedra_ 
saavedra_
Earlier this year, we touched upon the MASS MINGLING trend in our ‘10 trends for 2010’ briefing, but this phenomenon now warrants its own, full briefing:
As predicted by digital gurus more than a decade ago, hundreds of millions of people are now living large parts of their lives online (and lovin’ it!). However, this has not turned entire generations into homebound, anti-social zombies (another popular forecast). Au contraire: social media and mobile communications are fueling a MASS MINGLING that defies every cliché about diminished human interaction in our ‘online era’.
So (for now), forget a future in which the majority of consumers lose themselves in virtual worlds, with cities dying and kids never seeing the light of day; expect people to mingle and meet up like there’s no tomorrow. A definition:
MASS MINGLING | Thanks to the online revolution, hundreds of millions are now actively searching for, finding, connecting/signaling, and staying in touch with likeminded souls in the virtual world. Constant updates, GPS and mobile online access is now bringing this explosion of dating, networking, socializing and mingling to the real world domain.
Here’s what driving this trend, in more detail:
MASS MINGLING follows the pattern of any consumer trend, whereby an existing human need is unlocked in a new way. In this case, interacting with other people - a fundamental need (which goes beyond simply enjoying one another's company, or being emotionally dependent on other people) - has become easier thanks to new technology.
So, no surprise here that hundreds of millions of people are now adding and tending to personal profiles (listing likes and dislikes, interests, preferences, physical assets, and opinions), making it easier than ever before to ‘discover', or stay in touch with, likeminded others*.
Think friends and family, colleagues, romantic interests, and those sharing similar hobbies, interests, political preferences, grievances or causes. And all this 'befriending' takes place in unprecedented quantities: never before were people able to build and maintain such extensive and relevant personal networks.
Some numbers:
- Twitter: 100 million+ users, with 50 million tweets sent each day.
- Facebook : nearing 500 million users. The average user has 130 friends, spends 55 minutes a day on the site and receives three "event invitations" to real-life gatherings every month (in December 2009, the company stated that 3.5 million events were created every month). Next? According to The New York Times, Facebook will soon incorporate 'location' in two ways: its own features for sharing location and APIs to let other sites and apps offer location services to Facebook users. This could well be a MASS MINGLING killer app.
- LinkedIn : over 65 million members. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second.
- A ‘veteran’ MASS MINGLING engine like Meetup has 6.1 million members, handling 2.2 million RSVPs and 180,000 meet-ups, in 45,000 cities a month.
- Foursquare has one million users, while Gowalla: 150,000 users.
- Nearly three quarters (73%) of online teens and an equal number (72%) of young adults* use social network sites. 73% of adult profile owners use Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% use LinkedIn. (Source: Pew, Feb 2010.)
* Hundreds of millions of personal pages, feeds, status updates, tweets, profiles, blogs—courtesy of the Facebooks, the Twitters, the LinkedIns—are building an eternally up-to-date encyclopedia of individuals. Some thoughts on how this will lead to 'forever connected' amongst younger generations, from our fave media guru Jeff Jarvis:
“Thanks to our connection machine, they [young people] will stay linked, likely for the rest of their lives. With their blogs, MySpace pages, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Seesmic conversations, Twitter feeds, and all the means for sharing their lives yet to be invented, they will leave lifelong Google tracks that will make it easier to find them."
Image courtesy of flickr/rodrigofavera
While the rise of the online world remains one of the premier (consumer) stories of our time, URBANY and the EXPERIENCE ECONOMY /LIVING THE LIVE, with their decidedly 'offline' overtones, are enormously impactful too.
This incredibly powerful tandem of mass urbanization and experiences has resulted in an orgy of real world activities and happenings that are all about mingling; from countless cultural and not so cultural events, concerts, festivals, and seminars, to a burgeoning and truly global bar/dining/party scene, to a Warholian retail renaissance, to tourism & travel now being one of the world's largest industries, employing approximately 220 million people and generating over 9.4 percent of world GDP. In short, people have always, and will for a long time continue to enjoy interacting with other warm bodies.
The mobile web has eradicated any wired person's dilemma whether to be offline in the real world, or being online but stuck in one location (in a room, or worse, in a basement). Offline is now online, and online is offline. More on that below ('An info-layer on top of daily life').
A quick side-step: Traveling (and thus meeting up) has of course become easier, cheaper and yet more sophisticated on a global scale. Forget recessions, strikes and Icelandic volcanoes: the NO-FRILLS CHIC travel-eco-system now includes low cost airlines from the Middle East to Asia, and funky Yotel/CitizenM style hotels from Taipei to Toronto. Making it possible to go anywhere and meet anyone, at low costs, without having to sacrifice too much comfort.
Photo courtesy of Mistdog on Flickr
Back to the beginning of this Trend Briefing: MASS MINGLING is happening because people can. There's now an all-encompassing information layer* on top of real-world daily life, that (especially when mobile and location-based), turns 'connecting' into 24/7 and 'on the go', further blurring the boundaries between online and offline.
This layer has created a space in which following, finding, tracking, connecting to, and ultimately (spontaneously) meeting up in the real world with interesting known and unknown people will be easy, automatic, instinctive, convenient, and even natural. And thus, for many, connecting to 'strangers' is rapidly becoming second nature.
For a glimpse of things to come, dive into location-based 'meet-up' services like Foursquare (now doing 700,000 check-ins per day), Gowalla, Google Latitude and Loopt.
By the way, the first official Foursquare Day took place this April. News of the event spread by word of mouth, leading many users to organize parties and gatherings celebrating the social network.* Let's not forget that this emerging layer also taps into a vast reservoir of local knowledge and content that has been growing online for years. This incredible info-infrastructure further helps (if not encourages) MASS-MINGLING prone consumers to select venues and activities (based on profiles, preferences, reviews etc.) before venturing out.
Via | Trendwatching
