Top 3 Learnings From Social Networking with @topi

Social networking has revolutionized the consumer world. Everyday, millions of people around the globe keep in touch with their friends via blogs or over instant messaging. Since event planners’ most important job is to bring people together by creating engagement opportunities, what can be learned and how could technology enhance attendees’ experience?

People are mobile

It should not come as a big news that in 2014, most people are accessing digital content from their mobile devices. Using Facebook’s Q3 2013 SEC filing, we created the chart below, which shows that 74% of users access Facebook on mobile devices and the number of mobile users grows twice as fast as that of web users!

The slew of event apps providing attendees with agenda, speakers bios, etc. is evidence that event planners are well aware of the trend. If you were not, you have no excuse now.

People love to chat

2013 was also the year of the rise of instant messaging. Depending on who you ask, messaging is the most important feature of a phone—more so than regular phone calls. Even Facebook launched its own messenger app. Event apps in 2014 will have to adapt and let people communicate easily. Technology should facilitate what humans want to do and get out of the way.

People are social

At least with like-minded people, and that is the major difference between event goers and your friends on social networks: You don’t know the other attendees yet, and breaking the ice is always a challenge. Using social networking profiles, it is now possible to suggest interest-based groups to an audience of “strangers”, making it more natural to strike a conversation and meet. In 2014, it should not be necessary to walk around looking at nametags anymore.

We just scratched the surface of what is possible today. We will cover new topics and develop some in greater details in future posts. What have you learned from social networking that could be used when planning events? Share with us in the comments section!