Being a cutting edge blawger, and therefore infallibly knowledgeable about all things social media, it struck me as critical that I keep abreast of trends in the coming year.  After all, did I not move from LPs to 8 tracks almost immediately? 

My journey began at Social Media Today, which bills itself as the “web’s best thinkers on social media.”  I want to hear from the best thinkers, so I turned to Eric Rice.

Propelled by one billion peer users, social media has become the fastest growing marketing medium in the U.S. — nonetheless, the much-anticipated monetization of social media remains an unrealized quest for the Holy Grail. Legions of traditional marketers have predictably descended upon Facebook, Twitter, and countless blogs with transparent greed, but have largely failed to monetize social media, due to clumsy efforts that violate peer-to-peer trust etiquette.

Well that doesn’t sound promising.  Why build a shopping mall if everyone only browses and no one is buying?  I wondered what my old buddy  Niki Black thought was coming.

However, for lawyers, professionals who stand to benefit from blogging, I predict that the use of blogs by law firms will increase slightly. Blogs serve the dual purpose of increasing a law firm’s search engine rankings while showcasing the firm’s legal expertise. However, legal blogging will not be as popular as was in year’s past and rate of the deployment of new law blogs will slowly begin to decline in 2011.

Twitter use by attorneys will either remain steady or decline, while their participation on Facebook and LinkedIn will increase drastically. This is because the functionality of Twitter is changing and is used to share information rather than interact. I predict that lawyers will flock toward sites that allow them to interact and network and thus Twitter use will decline.

And now I feel pretty darned foolish for not having sought out Facebook friends to demonstrate my social media prominence.  Then there was the guy named Gabe Acevedo.  I have no clue who he is or why anyone would care what he has to say, but he’s got a column on Above The Law, and David Lat would never give someone a column unless he really knew what he was talking about.

The big secret with social media is that it’s not easy. In fact, it can be hard work. One needs to build an online audience, find or write entertaining content, link to others, and most of all keep at it. There is no magic formula. You can’t just sign on to Twitter or start a Facebook page and expect to turn into Adrian Dayton, although I’m sure many of us would if we could.

It didn’t strike me as being unduly difficult to become a laid-off lawyer of 8 months tenure who reinvented himself as a twitter expert, but then, Gabe must know stuff because he’s on ATL telling lawyers how to be more like him.

That said, you can certainly use social media to enhance your career. To be honest, I started my e-discovery blog mainly so I could tell people I had a blog. I was working as a legal recruiter for a small outfit in 2008, and I thought having a blog might help distinguish my company from the competition. I figured I would give it two weeks or so and see how things went.

Before I knew it, lawyers from across the country began to contact me for my opinion on e-discovery “trends.” This encouraged me to keep at it. In addition, I was learning a lot more about e-discovery because I was constantly researching the topic. As a result, I was able to speak with more authority on the matter, with my clients and potential clients.

Sorry. I thought he was a lawyer, since he’s telling lawyers how to use SM to enhance their career. My mistake.

Here’s my predictions.  Unless you’re in a discrete niche practice (like Dan Harris’ China Law) or a very small market where people can’t otherwise find you, social media will fill the time of your day that would otherwise be spent playing spider solitaire.  Niki is right that twitter is fading, as people realize that it’s boring and you don’t “network” with anyone you would talk to in real life anyway.

People who like to write will continue to write.  People who want to read what other people write will continue to read.  Nobody will get rich off either writing or reading.  As more people become aware of both, the quality of content, both posts and comments, will continue to go down and the deception will increase.  It won’t really matter, however, since it never really mattered.

Lawyers who are both skilled and provide excellent service to their clients will continue to have successful practices, regardless of whether they blawg, twit or maintain a lot of Facebook friends.  Some will have Blackberries. Some will have iPads.  Some will have legal pads. These are just the tools, not the goals, of practicing law.  I predict that all will have pens in the coming year.

In the coming year, law schools will continue to produce tens of thousands of graduates more than can be absorbed in the practice or needed by society.  They will join the ranks of the currently unemployed, and those who are more ambitious, scurrying for $500 felonies, then blowing the cases on quick pleas while oozing angst over their having lost another poor innocent to the vicious system. 

They will all be on twitter proclaiming what great lawyers they are, bolstered by those oldsters who want to curry favor with the baby lawyers to prove they’re hip and pretend their relevant, who struggle to keep abreast of their own practice of $500 felony pleas.  Every new lawyer will have a shiny iPad and flip flops.  They will kvell every time someone notices they exist, then demand their due respect for having 24/7 internet access.

In the coming year, the swarm of legal marketers that has descended upon all things social media will disappear, trying to get back their former position as assistant manager at Dairy Queen (apologies to Mister Softee), as they finally realize that the people who might be tricked into using their services have no money left.

I predict in 2011, people will pay more attention to Dan Hull at  What About Clients?   They will toughen up, start putting their integrity and effort ahead of shiny electronic objects, and realize that neither whining, work/life balance nor political correctness are going to pay their bills nor save their clients.  They will stop embracing meaningless words and ideas that justify their belief that the legal profession is all about making themselves happy. 

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.