Technology surrounds us every day, and even though it is constantly evolving, norms are established faster than ever before.

The Next Web's Scott Gerber highlighted a number of trends in the industry, as judged by successful entrepreneurs.

All social, all day

Social media networks and activities figured highly in the trends, something that will likely continue into 2013.

YouTube has remained at the forefront of video sharing, and entrepreneur Raul Pla believes the website has seen internal changes as a result.

“Videos that keep the viewer watching longer and receiving likes are ranking higher than videos with lots of views. The name of the game is quality content,” Raul Pla told The Next Web.

Only a year ago, Pinterest would read as a spelling mistake more than a popular social network and the image-heavy sharing which features so heavily has proved a hit with consumers and marketers.

Building information

Sean Ogle sees social influence parameters such as Facebook likes and Google +1’s as the next big thing to change the way business works online.

“Those who can capitalise on this are going to see a lot of success moving forward,” Ogle said.

Personalisation of social networks and web usage, both from users wishing to see what they want to see, and websites targeting specific users, has the opportunity to increase the all-important user engagement and interaction rates.

One trend to rule them all

Above all of these expectations is a simpler and increasingly mobile world.

Smartphones are constantly connected, and with more people using these to browse and share every day, companies will need to look at mobile before anything else.

Derek Shanahan believes mobile is already at the forefront of the market, however the market still needs to catch up.

“You can’t ignore mobile, and yet most of the web isn’t optimised. I think increasingly new apps and publications will focus on mobile and tablets first, old web second,” Shanahan said.

Between all of these trends that the market buys into, entrepreneur Chris Kelly thinks the next 18 months will be about simplifying the product.

“By this point, we have all downloaded more apps than we can make use of and we are all victims of information overload,” Kelly said.

Products which aggregate, organise and scrub your social media, will be the way forward, and some are already making a splash.

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