Fifty shades of Google

We’ll never know, until we’re caught up in the quick flow of a network gaining followers, which ones will be a success. But we can look forward to a great journey of discovery, Manjula Narayan writes.

Tech pundits prophesy that this will be the year when new social networks will pop up every month, only to crash and burn out with the same alacrity. The rest will go to the great MySpace in the sky or be labelled the neo-Orkutiyas of the contemporary online ecosystem.

We'll never know, until we're caught up in the quick flow of a network gaining followers, which ones will be a success, but it's safe to say that we can look forward to a great journey full of discoveries.

Facebook, that grizzly old warrior of social media, will in all likelihood continue to add users despite the claustrophobia it induces among some users. And Twitter will continue to be a great place to exchange information and vent about issues with, perhaps, the added benefit of video.

Also, now that it's planning to make it easy for users to access every one of their own tweets, expect a few books to emerge out of the twitstream. Online catfights on ideological issues with absolute strangers could be transmogrified into high literature and finally be of some use in the real world. (*eye roll* as they say on Twitter)

There are murmurs that 2013 could also be the year augmented reality takes off and everyone becomes a cyborg in snazzy Google glasses accessing information on inbuilt screen as they window shop skype, and tweet about the experience, and update their facebook status, all while striding down the street.

It will possibly be the best way to amass a mine of trivia about the universe even as you selectively block out the world. Ah, finally your socially-networked self can stay online all the time without having to clutch a cellphone like it's a protective talisman.

Yes, the future's so bright you gotta wear Google shades.