Digital Shoreditch: Facebook is Scary, but Socially Augmented Reality is the Future

Such is our obsession with Facebook, social networking and the endless need to share our lives online, we are approaching a state of 'Facebook fatigue' according to social media expert Christophe Mallot.

Speaking during the Brands day of Digital Shoreditch in London, Mallot claimed that users are "losing faith" in Facebook and that it is hard to keep up with all of the activity Facebook presents us with.

"I can spend hours looking through my news feed and friends' profiles and it gets really boring, but if I post something and nobody comments on it then it can be quite said," the Frenchman said.

Mallot, who is a social media strategy advisor for carve Consulting, said that although Facebook "can be pretty annoying, it does not mean that I will leave it. Something that was once pleasurable and useful has become time consuming and annoying."

So what about the solutions? Well, Mallot claims that, while Facebook may say you have 700 friends, it just isn't possible to be friendly with them all and this makes much of what they say and do socially irrelevant to you. "people are losing faith in the brand and it's simply hard to keep up.

"Then of course there is the privacy settings, and between the timeline and the new apps you don't know who sees what, and that's quite scary. And finally it's really overwhelming, it's tiring and impossible to keep up with 700 friends and all their parties and holidays."

"In a nutshell, Facebook has become a friend Big Brother, it's scary but it is still indispensable."

So what went wrong?

Well, Mallot claims that Facebook doesn't enhance your real life in the way that it could, and instead he believes that the next big thing is "socially augmented reality".

"Real social interactions are all local and mobile, which means you're always with someone, or on your way to meet someone.

"Let's say I ask my phone what to do this evening at 5pm after Digital Shoreditch, it might say that I should go have a beer at the bar around the corner.

"Why would it say that? Well, it would pull from the weather channel that it is sunny and I could have a drink outside, it would also know that the bar has my favourite beer, because it knows from my bank account or because I liked it on Facebook."

Mallot continues, speaking to a gathering of around 100 start-up founders, investors and journalists: "It would also know from my bank account that I don't have much money, but it knows that it's happy hour, so that's quite convenient. It would also recommend this place for the music it plays, because it knows from Spotify what I like to listen to.

"And finally, it would suggest five of my friends to meet me there because it knows they live locally or it can see from FourSquare that they have just checked in somewhere nearby."

Concluding his brief talk, Mallot said: "What I want to say is that we have the technology today that can really enhance your real life social experiences. And I'm convinced that, what that happens, when the technology is not just supporting advertisers, but supporting you, then we will all benefit from it."