Social second-quarter 2013: analysis and update

1. Summary

During the past few months, many of the trends that underlie the social transformation in business have accelerated, like the rapid shift to proximal devices and the emergence of social platforms operating as marketplaces.

This report will examine:

• The three forces impacting business today. We will recapitulate and distill the concepts developed in late 2012 for the road map for social tools in the enterprise, now presented as the 3F model: the fast-and-loose postnormal economy, the 3D workforce, and the new scaling of computing.
• The changing center of the social universe. Apple’s iOS 7 is more than an embrace of “flat” design: It embeds social streaming in the operating system level, and this will change everything.
• Placeforms: stepping in to fill a vacuum. As business, government, and labor retreat from their traditional roles in the marketplace, a new category of social platforms acting as marketplaces (marketplace + platform = placeform) is emerging, and it will redefine the world of work.