I was reading through
SocialMediaToday, and one of the bloggers asked the question of whether Social Media will survive this downturn that we are going through.
I think there are 2 ways to look at it: 1 is from the perspective of the advertisers, and the other is from the perspective of everyone out there using the various types of social media (the rest of us).
From the first perspective: I think that just as happened after the first Internet bubble burst in '01, most advertisers will pull back anything that they can't track or put a specific ROI to, prior to trying it. There will be some, however, that will continue to engage their customers by creating truly engaging programs across blogs, social networking, UGC sites, etc. etc. And at the end they will be waaaayyy ahead of their competition, because for the rest of us, social media is becoming the way that we live, when online. Everyone I know (or ever knew, it seems) is on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. I read a whole bunch of blogs every day, and write one, of course, as does just about everyone that I know professionally. Every single eCommerce site will (if it doesn't already) have an opportunity for customers to be engaged, whether through reviews or comments at its most simple form, or in much more engaging experiential interactions and communities. In short, by the time the advertisers and marketers get around to realizing that they should be spending an appropriate share of their budgets on these types of campaigns/sites/engagements, their customers will already be there waiting for them. Impatiently. So, social media will indeed survive, and will end up becoming the platform for how we all use the Internet.
Now, if someone can only figure out how to get Facebook to be profitable - but that's a whole other topic.