Social media has dramatically changed the way we interact on and off the Web. And it keeps doing so, every few months launching us into a new feature set, a new tool, a new “the place to be” platform. How to keep up with it all?

According to social media watcher David Armano, there will be yet another upheaval in social media in 2010. Mr. Armano, of the Austin-based consultancy The Dachis Group, recently wrote on the Harvard Business website about a half-dozen trends he sees panning out in the near-term.

We liked what Mr. Armano had to say. So we decided to look at what his six predictions for 2010 might mean for the U.S. government’s social media mavens and followers. As social media matures (and now that our parents are all using Facebook, it indeed has “matured”), we could all benefit from gazing into the crystal ball—and being ready to react fast, before everything changes again.

Now then, a look at 2010…

Social media begins to look less social

Mr. Armano posits that social media will become more exclusive as people trim down their networks and the updates they receive. (At the very least, they’ll probably organize and filter their networks better.) This may lead to less attentive “following” of government news and feeds by citizens, especially when they’re not directly relevant to a person’s daily life or work. For government web managers and tweeters, it means stepping up the quality of content to stay meaningful to your followers. You might also become more selective in who you are following, friending and scanning in the media… but be mindful not to trap yourself in a self-reinforcing information bubble.

Corporations look to scale

Companies will look to leverage social media to reduce costs and improve connections with customers or clients. But Mr. Armano notes that few have successfully done so yet. Political campaigns have lately been among the best examples of scaling social networks for positive result. Once in government, the  challenge to create and tap into networks for a common cause is much tougher. But there’s still plenty of potential to use social media as a way to gather ideas and data, spread messages, and provide more tactile citizen engagement. We’ve already seen the Obama administration use social media to solicit ideas for saving money and promoting recycling, to name two modest examples. The CDC’s work in disseminating flu information via social media may be the next big success story.

Where governments have set up online forums for citizens to provide comments, it will be imperative for those agencies to find a way to read all the posts—or at least to “process” them into meaningful buckets that can be understood and acted on. If agencies get lost in the crush of incoming opinions and data, the two-way street to improving governance will be a giant traffic jam.

Social business becomes serious play

This trend-shift, says Mr. Armano, will see businesses creating incentives to motivate employees to participate in social media on behalf of their company. One way to fulfill President Obama’s call for transparency and openness in government is to equip employees at government agencies to increase social media usage to engage the public… and then increase it again. While the link between media outreach and return on investment may not be as direct in government as in the corporate world, feds can still further their agency’s mission with smart use of social media. Employees who do participate should be recognized for those efforts (hint, hint). At a minimum, when information really needs to get out (as in a pandemic or emergency situation), agencies that have active networks will be in better position to reach all citizens.

Your company will have a social media policy (and it will be strictly enforced)

The Wild West days of “anything goes” social media are waning. Adults are now in the room, and that means policies and procedures. Just as folks in the private sector will face more defined rules to guard against competitors, government employees will likewise find their social media activities restricted, or at least closely watched, in the name of discretion. Loose lips can still sink ships … or political careers, anyway… so agencies will likely batten down the hatches. Expect rules concerning what official information can be broadcast on government social media accounts, as well as guidance for employees on what information they can broadcast on their personal social media accounts, and when. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest may be banned in some government offices, but where they’re not, they are a frequent stop. The growing popularity and accessibility of the mobile Web means that even blocking desktop access to these sites may not be enough.

Mobile becomes a social media lifeline

As we just noted, the shift from using computers to using mobile devices with Internet capabilities is underway. In the government's case, it will likely translate to employees in charge of social media having one set of technological appliances for personal social media use and a separate set for official social media use. Content providers will also have to grapple with the different user experience that mobile brings — everything from screen sizes to download times to the applications themselves are different on an iPhone or BlackBerry than the Web.

There’s another factor in thinking about mobile that is not often mentioned: the places where we use the mobile Web — elevators, taxicabs, waiting rooms, bathrooms, bars, even behind the wheel — are far different and more distracting than the sitting-at-a-desk manner in which we’ve used the traditional Web. Who reads a 10,000 word paper on a BlackBerry? Who can absorb a large detailed image on an iPhone? It’s a different paradigm for computing, one to which Web producers and users are both still adjusting.

Sharing no longer means e-mail

You may be of the generation that still manages work life through email. (I am, but I sense the end is near.) Mr. Armano talks of the ability for people to share news articles via Facebook, Twitter and other applications. There’s instant messaging too, plus a new wave of collaborative tools like Google Wave that don’t neatly fit in one category. In government offices where such tools are allowed, they are already in widespread use. Even where they’re restricted, alternatives to regular fuddy-duddy email are often available — wikis, private forums, internal portals with messaging or commenting features, and the like. Hate to say it, but email is the new snail mail. You can retweet that if you like.

Have a different take or see other trends affecting social media for government? Leave a comment or let us know.

Andrea Jones contributed to this story. Follow @OhMyGov on Twitter. David Armano is @Armano