Hello and welcome to the Next Great Thing. For the past couple months we’ve been operating in “beta” mode, loading up our site with content on trends in youth, mobile, and digital communications. Our focus is what’s next among teens, tweens and twenty-somethings, and how it will impact the future of communications.
Check out our past posts to see what we’re about. Meanwhile, here is a look at 8 topics on our top-of-mind. Some we’ve mentioned and other’s we’ll be blogging about in the coming weeks, so stay tuned….
1. Social Network Sites (SNS) are the new phone number, portal and recommendation engine that link all youth communications and media consumption together. Next up are micro-television networks based around SNS content created by users. It is quite possible that MySpace will become the next Microsoft as it and other SNS evolve into our new virtual operating systems.
2. Personalization, a major youth trend, is best exemplified by their gravitation towards avatar technology. They will lead the general consumer population in the adoption of avatar-based digital applications and virtual worlds, which will include 3D browsers, personal avatars and avatar-based social networks.
3. Young people are rapidly embracing a mobile “off-deck” web experience. With the advent of true convergence devices, interface interoperability, increased storage, network speed, sideloading/USB compatibility, strong video capture capabilities, and increased availability of credible content, the carrier deck needs to adapt quickly or risk experiencing the same fate as America Online (AOL).
4. Many properties have given open access to their APIs giving developers the tools they need to create powerful applications. This crowd-sourcing enables users to build on existing applications and features to create new experiences for youth. Notable examples include Socialight’s location-based “geo-tagging” services that leverage Google’s API. It enables youth to find friends and discover location-relevant media. There are also dozens of applications built by Facebook users who have added new dimension to an already powerful social networking platform by leveraging Facebook’s API.
5. Widgets enable consumers to organize, manage, syndicate, track and monetize content. These tiny bits of code have the potential to end the home page as we know it and become one of the most essential media, advertising and content syndication vehicles ever.
6. Location-based technology is gaining in importance, fueled by services such as Dodgeball*, Socialight, Helio’s Buddy Beacon and Loopt Mobile. We’ll soon wonder how we lived without this sort of technology. Bring this into malls and stores and you have tremendous retails opportunities through the syndication of entertainment content and location, barcode and other in-mall/at-retail promotions.
*yes, we are painfully aware of Dennis and Alex’s departure from Dodgeball, but our social lives are holding out hope in it’s survival… but here are some other LBS to watch: Twitter (check out Twittervision in 3D), Jaiku, Plazes….tell us about more
7. There is a new media measurement model being touted for social media properties called B2C (Business 2 Consumer).
B2C = Advertising + C2C = Consumer Engagement. This new model is forcing a discussion about value creation within the C2C (Consumer to Consumer) world.
8.Youth are pushing for a fully integrated home media experience that is user-programmed, 1:1, immediate, active and personal. A young person’s digital world is their personal networked stream of original content, and brands needs to deliver the 3 C’s of creativity, content, and control.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ed Schipul // May 21, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Like the stake in the ground on 8 trends to watch.
On personalization, I suspect this is personalization of their content more than filtered personalization of content on a site. By that I mean I don’t see a teenager personalizing their CNN page for THEIR content, but I do see them personalizing their twitter background. This is an important distinction for marketers IMHO.
Speaking of mobile apps like twitter, I was surprised to see dodgeball still make the list and no mention of twitter. Particularly with the departure of the dodgeball founders:
http://flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/
Widgets and mashups - definitely. Although the battle with myspace for allowable widgets will remain challenging.
Great start and I am curious where this will go!
2 Allison // May 22, 2007 at 7:53 am
Ed, added a note in response to your Dodgeball comment. Also am curious what new LBS people are trying out!
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