Ten Media Trends for 2012 redux

Tomorrow/Thursday I will be attending the FT Digital media conference, as is my wont every year. I had a look at the Hotwire/33 Media Media Trends report that was linked to it over lunch, and have a few comments to make on it. In a nutshell, the Trends are (abridged, and commented on):

1. The Interest graph, which has 3 key areas of activity

- Influence rankings and perks
- Tailored information
- Interest networks

Comment - I think its still very early days and risks turning into a "be careful what you wish for" area in three ways. Firstly, the current services are still pretty inaccurate (being very new) so will lead to incorrect spend and possibly loss of credibility, and a resulting trough of despond etc etc. The other thing is the sort of tools used to really make it accurate are quite privacy invasive so will lead to legislative kickbacks. And these same techniques will be what allow users to take control of their own data, VRM style.


2. Putting your business on the map

This is the third year in a row we’re calling next year a breakthrough stage for location based services.....As we’ve argued elsewhere in this paper, if you’re not building your presence on the location based services that matter to your customers, 2012 will be the year that you begin to fade from view.

Comment - this is the fifth year we have been told that Location Based Services are the Breakthrough Thing next year I think there is an underplayed unwillingness of people to give up on privacy that is not taken into account with these services. Generation 1 died, Generation 2 is gamified to the nines and is still not taking off, Generation 3 will be driven off the smart devices but look at the kickback Apple and Android got.


3. How tablets are changing communication

Expect to see communications plans next year that include the creation of high quality content such as HD video and high resolution photos, wherever possible created by users, and all packaged up in ready-made galleries and compatible formats.

Comment - We agree, there is something very different about the Tablet, it is a true Fifth Screen, but evolution is hard to predict - today it is a multimedia consumption device in the main, however, applying Moore's Law gives you some very powerful devices in 2, 4, 6 years.


4. Who are the new social media celebrities?

...surely 2012 will see the rise of the ‘social media celebrity’, those who are experts in their field, influencers, keen communicators, people who will provide us with feedback and by their serendipitous retweets, project us into viral stardom within their personal niche.

These ‘social media celebrities’ may include spokespeople, CEOs and brand experts. They may only be famous to 15 people, but will hang on to their title for a lot longer than Ashton’s 15 minutes.

There was an interesting tweet the other day, about audience inflation - one upon a time being able to have 100,000 subscribers was a huge thing, now a Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber add those numbers a month on social media. The thing that is not usually articulated is the strength of the tie, game theorists differentiate between strong and week ties based on the amount of effort involved, and a "follow" or "like" button is as weak as it gets - we see it as the Next Generation direct mail.


5. The socialising of TV and music

Your brand video could be listed alongside “How I Met Your Mother” and “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA”. It finally turns everyone into a potential publisher. Shakespeare coined the phrase “all the world’s a stage”. And digital communicators took the same thought and applied it to the world of brands, companies and governments: we are all publishers now.

Comment - Agreed - we started telling our clients that "everyone is a publisher" in 2005, and helped set up our first client Web TV network in 2007. It is still very early days though, and Ad revenue is no cinch (never mind showing Ads issues) so it will be a marketing spend for a while yet


6. Social media and internal communications

At this time both human resources and internal communications departments were seeing the inception of a communications backchannel in corporate culture as a threat, to efficient communications and to productivity alike.

What we will see happen in 2012 is a tipping point for unlocking the potential of the third social media type. After paid and earned, there will be employed media as a platform. For planned communications campaigns, unleashing tens of thousands of tweets, Facebook likes, LinkedIn posts, forum and blog mentions will become the bedrock for the big brand.

Comment - While I agree that Social media will move more into Internal comms, we know from our experience that there are many internal political barriers. And Gawdelpus, there is a big risk that Twitter etc turns into a junk mail site and kills those that love it if not used carefully.


7. How cashless payments could unlock a wave of innovation

- Our pockets will get lighter:
- Proving I’m here
- Social commerce

Comment - While we agree that payments within social nets will be a major thing, we don't think cash will go away anytime soon owing to its privacy benefits, and the location/proof of presence element of transactions will worry people as much as attract them. However, given the interest of others to see your data, we predict non private payments cashless payments will be free and private cash payments will have a cost.


8. Gamification

Whether you’re a brand, a publisher, a Government or a developer, game dynamics offer a low-cost way to enhance even very basic products and services. If you haven’t thought about how this affects you, 2012 would be a good year to lead the way in your organisation or industry.

Comment - Gamification is undoubtedly a useful set of techniques to improve a service's UI, but, just like SEO, the answer to a whole raft of crap or dodgy services is still not to gamify ithem but improve the underlying service.


9. Forums

Forums are arguably where social media evolved from the primordial soup of the early web. Places users could generate content, connect with one another, build communities around interests and discover new stuff serendipitously.

So, we looked forward to 2012 and asked ourselves: what does the future hold for forums? The original internet bulletin boards may have been passed over, but the essence of a forum – an online discussion site in the form of posted messages and comments that are at least temporarily archived – is still alive and well online.

And research shows why forums have turned out to have such longevity. Recent IEEE Computer Society research (2010) highlights the concept of the microcommunity for analysing the durability and openness of internet forums. The social and support dimension to very specific interest groups results in a credible resource of information and understanding within the sought field.

Comment - Forums are still where its really at, the old Web 1.0 forums still have more participants and traffic than Facebook, and drive huge traffic on Web 2.0 services - look at the success of Mumsnet for example, a vertical forum aggregator.


10. Automotive app stores

- App stores - for cars and driving
- Social networks (based around cars)
- Location-based services: When

Comment - we are all in love with our cars (though some are calling Peak Car, in the OECD anyway), but there is competition for brands - I own a classic car, I have been a member of the relevant Yahoo group (and the eGroup before that) for nearly 2 decades. The challenge for commercial brands is to build a combination of apps, social network and location services that serve the customer enough compared to independent, over the top services. I think that will be a challenge