Visitors to Dutch social network Hyves can easily leave a video message on profiles of friends and others without having to upload anything. The visitor clicks 'record' and then 'send' so that the profile owner will receive the message immediately. To make this possible the user does need to place a special widget (gadget, a special piece of code).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as an extension by third parties, but soon this’ll be a standard function of social networks. Just like scribbles, e-mails and text messages, voice mail and video messages are part of maintaining relationships. And not just for asynchronous traffic (without direct contacts), but also for direct traffic such as calling, chatting, or camming. Then the link to other social networks will follow, just like phone networks are all connected, and only then can Hyves (and its social network competition) grow into a full social coaching brand.

MyHeritage, one of the world's most popular family-websites, is taking over social network Kindo. Worldwide MyHeritage has over 25 million members and, up to now, has been translated into 25 different languages.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Facilitating mutual contact will eventually be a market for a few companies in the world. Where there are now thousands of social networks and hundreds of telecom operators that also store telephone directories and people need to maintain a different profile everywhere, later people can maintain their data and manage their relationships with others using one social network. Whether that’s family, it’s about friends or vague acquaintances. It doesn’t matter what network they’re on, you can just link to them. Just like the railway tracks used to be all different or we had to connect telephone nets. Social networking sites will offer personal contact services to people: what do I need to do to make you feel happier in your social life? And that mostly automated. The development of big companies that can afford the technology required is well under way. This is an example of this.

Dutch telecomoperator Hi makes a backup of your telephone book. Users can do this by logging onto Hi and activating the service. They'll receive a text message with the cell phone's setting. Through the phone's menu an online back-up can be made of the telephone numbers. Making and updating a back-up of the Hi-phonebook is free. Who doesn't have a limitless internet bundle pays for the use of data.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how social coaching brands are slowly In 2008 they guard your contacts, some allow you to chat to contacts, others calling them and with the next one you can cam. A few steps further along we won’t think in terms of phone numbers or email anymore, but solely in people, in names, in relationships, in emotions. What you feel with people and then say ‘I’d like to talk to them again!’ And that happens then. You no longer need to look for or save a number, trusted relations will just always be with you. Facilitated by social coaching brands.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Glubble facilitates social contacts between a family. Every family has its own family site for photos, a shared calendar can be managed for nice and less nice activities (such as the dentist), birthdays of family members, or keep each other up-to-date about what they're doing at a specific time. Furthermore parents can limit the amount of possible websites their child could visit.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Social coaching brands help with the maintenance of relationships with other people. Where in the first phase we kept phone numbers in our phone, in the second phase entered the type of relationship, this type of brand will emphasize the difference in relationships. Glubble currently emphasizes families, but when this will soon be connected to other families (for example at what time little Emily has to be home after playing with a friend), it’ll also facilitate other types of relationships. Soon we’ll be able to ‘call’ through this type of brand and the spoken intention in our conversation (‘so tonight we’ll meet at 8 pm’) be analyzed immediately, registered in the agenda to remind us of this at a quarter to eight. Not yet, but later. It’s all happening step by step.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Through the renewed Windows Live Photo Gallery people can't just group their photos based on date or location, but also by people. They can also edit the photos. For example, you can make the photo black and white with a single click of the mouse and you can rotate the photos in any angle.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brand will start to recognize the images around us to advertise with them. Brands that specialize in social contact between people, that facilitate with personal contact (such as (Windows) Live, a social coaching brand in the making), also recognize our friends. From their photograph, but later also by their voice, their walk or their behavior. In the long term, even better than we can recognize them ourselves. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Business social network LinkedIn now has a special application for the iPhone. With this users can write a status update immediately, look up contacts or send them a message.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how coaching brands continue to be shaped. Now we’re getting pC functions on the cell phone. Soon we’ll be able to call those people (no need for a phone number, just click). We can automatically record conversations and let speech interpretation report it. And later, much later, our conversations will be analyzed (automatically!) For example, if we hold a sales conversation we’ll receive tips on how to do better. Which emotions we failed to register and kept talking. This allows this type of brand to grow into a coach. But first they should be always with us. That feels right.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Familii.nl offers people the ability to hunt for ancestors and family members all over the globe. The looking, finding and keeping in contact with family are the most important features of the site. You can develop your family tree, keep the birthdays and addresses of your family members up to date and share photos and movies.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Social coaching brands help you to maintain your network. For now loose niches will be created because traditional social network (such as MySpace, Facebook or Livejournal) don’t pay any attention to them, but they’ll be reintegrated. On these networks you can see mothers who have no abilities to do something with their baby other than share some pictures, you’ll see profiles with hundreds of friends without differentiating between family, acquaintances and read friends, you’ll see people who are getting married, but they can’t do anything other than a few extra messages, list items or calls.

The limited abilities of today’s social networks is creating new competition. It’s only a matter of time, though, before social networks return to their core business: facilitating contact between people.

At Totspot (Dutch) parents of babies can make a profile with the timeline of their child. The time lines distinguish themselves by heights and lows and supplemented by photos, videos and music.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Look at it as part photo-album, part diary and part social network that is brought together online. We keep seeing more and more niche social sites that aim for a specific group of users. Where you used to need hundreds of videotapes and scrapbooks for maintaining a child’s time line, now you have an online archive. The digitalizing of all information will be public property and families from faraway places can see exactly how children develop. At a next visit a child won’t even have to tell people what happened to it. They’ll already know.

Vodafone has taken over ZYB, a mobile social network, as a step towards the implementation of the 'Total Communications'-strategy. Users of ZYB can enter the data on their cell phone as contacts, appointments and messages and save it online. In that vision Vodafone isn't a (mobile) telephone company, but it's all about the contacts in the cell phone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Vodafone understands that the additional value in future will be much closer to human emotions. Not the dialing of a number, not the connection of two machines, but it’s the contact between two people that matters. Each screen will soon be connected to the virtual world, so each screen will also be a telephone. And contacts who are available on the first screen will, per definition, also be available on the second, no matter where you are in the world. That’s saying something.

If screens are per definition always connected with one another, the companies who provide this are offering a commodity product. People aren’t interested in this at all anymore. In part because the costs will be incredibly low. Worldwide there’ll only be a few players who connect screens with one another. Just like there’s only a limited amount of oil companies.

What people will be willing to pay for is the assistance in maintaining one’s contacts. ‘Call Anne’ is the basic function. ‘Tell Anne I’ll be a bit later’ is a next step, but what’s really important is the answer to the question ‘Why wouldn’t you call Anne back?’ Then you’ve got to immerse yourself in the lives of humans. Only then can you call yourself a social coaching brand.

Fring is an application which you install on your iPhone fring and which allows you to call, chat and get into contact with your friends on Skype, Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger), Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo, and AIM. In addition you can see on your iPhone whether someone is available. This negates the need to keep copying your contacts from one list to another. All you need is a data or WiFi connection on your iPhone. Calling will be free and it won't matter if your friends are behind their computer or are available on their cell phone or another device with an internet connection.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how a social coaching brand, a brand that helps you make new contacts, maintain them or even break them off, is created. With people, or with companies (read: networks of people.) It starts with making a complete list of all the people you have contact with, had contact with, or might want to have contact with. It starts with this.

Facebook-users will soon be able to use their profile data on other sites. With a click of the button users will be able to add their profile data to all the websites that participate in different projects of the two community sites.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

While we used to have a separate device for each part of our life, we find that today devices are becoming ‘Masters of all trades’. Think of the mobile phone that just about lacks the same function as a refrigerator, but can do pretty much everything else. Might be over the top, but it’s a trend that’s also developing in services. An all-in-one profile! It’s a concrete and big step towards the idea that, as a user, you only need one virtual identity. While we now have to register separately on different sites, environments and virtual worlds, in future we’ll only need one profile to cover the entire internet. You’ll register yourself for Hyves and, during your registration, you indicate that your profile can also be registered on Ebay. So one username with one password set up only once. Also think about ready-made computers from a computer store (like the German MediaMarkt). During your very first installation (of Windows) you’ll be asked whether your personal information may also be registered at sites of your choice. The consumer will need only one password. Just like there is only one you in the real world, there will be only one unique virtual you. The Everything-doer. 

Via Nulaz you can see where your friends are at any given moment, an event in the area or background information about a building. The information is given on the basis of the restaurant site lense, Wikipedia, the Uitburo and NL10 and NL20. Users can also add information to the system. The application that needs to be installed estimates the location on the basis of GSM masts.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In this way the functions of social coaching brands are taking shape. Now you need to enter your friends one by one, soon your friend list on Hyves will be enough. Now you still need to install software but soon switching your mobile on will be enough. Now you need to operate the the technology but soon you will just be able to ask ‘Where is Billy?’. This development contributes to this future vision.

Korean mobile phone operator KTF offers a 'Love Detector' service which analyzes if someone talks with love and affection. Users can test themselves. They have to aim their mobile phone at themselves during a video conversation, see a 'love meter' bar on their screen or mobile phone, and later get a text message with the analysis. The service costs $0.32 (yh). Brands thus get better at understanding us. Not only our written language, not only our spoken words, but also the way we say them. In the end brands will be better listeners than humans. It will take at least another thirty years for that to happen though.

Indipenda helps women get through a divorce. With advice, inspiration, relaxation, talking and even dating, the life of a divorced woman is filled in a little better (mf, Dutch). In tomorrow's new economy a new type of brands evolves. A type of brands functioning as coaches. They stand beside us and help us make choices. This service is to be included in the portfolio of social coaching brands. These types of brands get to know someone very well from a very young age, and they can connect people, help them maintain the connection, and if necessary also terminate the contact. Independia contributes to this development.

New Dutch dating site Paiq matches people with artificial neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence trying to imitate the way human brains work. People who register first have to enter personal characteristics and a picture. Paiq then matches people based on intelligent rules, which in their turn our based on psychological insights. At the first contact the picture is made very vague, so that the dating partner can't see it sharp. Only after the users have been talking to each other for a longer time, they can see who they are dealing with (via em, Dutch).

The brand Paiq thus becomes a little smarter every day. In fact this brand evolves to be a smart friend, who understands who you are, thinks along, your coach. Someone who can introduce you to other people. A valuable brand. Thus new technology is used to make a brand, and Paiq can grow to be a coaching brand. And this is only the beginning.

Live Search, live.com's search engine, now can also rhyme. Live Search is the world's first rhyming search engine. If you type 'rhyme ' in Live Search, in the first search result you get a whole series of possible rhyme words. The rhyming search engine is based on Dutch website Rijmgein (sc, Dutch). In the future, brands will assist us in choosing the right words. Poetry is part of that. This is a very early example in that direction.