Uneven Distribution.

Keeping Up With The Joneses Genes: Why 2008 will be the tipping point for life online

January 9th, 2008

So everyone is busy talking about what’s going to be the big thing this year. There are going to be some cool things happen on the digital frontier, but what will cause possibly the biggest impact online will likely be nothing more than how people use the internet. People are finally realising how cool the internet is. It’s not something in their peripheral vision anymore, it’s something that is unquestionably and unremarkably part of people’s lives.

The thought of a computer as a singular object that we must dedicate our full attention to in one session will shortly be gone from the mainstream mindset. Not long ago you were an uber-geek if you pulled out your mobile at the pub to pull up wikipedia and settle an argument (more to the point, you were an uber-geek for having internet enabled on your phone). Today it’s almost second nature, and these people aren’t geeks in the slightest.

Sometime in the not too distant future you’ll probably start to get sick of how often you hear 23andme.com mentioned. It’s sites like this that perfectly demonstrate what I’m talking about. Or perhaps the fact that the ESPN NFL mobile site had more views last week than the regular site (4.9M views in 24 hours). Or maybe Apple’s projected sales of 10 million iPhones. People (real people, not just geeks) have absorbed the online world into their mindset to the point that online services and information are front of mind when they need anything.

The flurry of internet-based startups and mountains of cash poured into them in the last few years means that the tech industry is well and truly ready for this. Yes, a lot of these companies will die, but a significant amount will rise to the top and join the ranks of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to continue to challenge the oldschool media empires. Unsurprisingly this industry is already a few years ahead. I’m pretty sure my parents won’t hear about twitter, seesmic or etsie for a while still, but the technology and general way of thinking that services like this will produce will probably affect us as much as Amazon, Google and eBay have up to the present day.

But what does this mean for those involved in the online advertising and marketing of real-world brands? Scarily, the majority of big brands just aren’t ready for this. They’re not in any position to take advantage of the way people are going to start thinking about and using the internet. They’re dismally 1.0. There are not enough great services being offered by brands, not enough integration into the social graph, and not enough conversations with customers. There’s plenty of talk about how bad the music industry has handled the online space, and the sad fact is that most big consumer brands aren’t that far behind.

The parallels with the music industry probably shouldn’t be taken too far though. The only thing we really share with them is overprotective lawyers and uninformed high-level decisions makers. In short people have been too precious about their brands and too cautious about doing anything new, with the attitude that the online space was still niche enough to ignore.

And now the time has come. The good news is that because no one has really done anything, everyone’s on the same page. There is still plenty of room to make a move and really get brands online. But if it doesn’t happen soon than a vast majority of people will become comfortable with the way they live online, and that won’t include any sort of dialogue or experience with brands.

Note: Through all of this I’m talking about developed and mostly English speaking communities. Many Asian countries are in a slightly different space right now, and Japan is on a whole different highway. Meanwhile in developing countries, further adoption and reduced costs of technology will likely make a far bigger impact on the world as a whole than being able to get my genetic profile from 23andme.com. I hope.

A few links…
Marshall Kirkpatrick’s fantastic article on RWW, “Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption”
Jeremiah Owyang’s great summary of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008.
Everyblock.com has had a lot of hype, and will probably get it’s fair share of press when it finally launches.

Comments

Great links, thx!

It strikes me as startlingly strange that online culture has suddenly become a part of the mainstream mind-set. I see people like my grandparents using “Google” as a verb & chatting about rss feeds in grocery store queues and it blows my mind.

The world is growing geeky - we’ve been appropriated & integrated into the ‘real-world’ of people’s lifestyle… and with this appropriation, we’ve also been granted a direct link into the forefront of their consciousness where memes and ideas can penetrate and spread at ever increasing speeds.

“and the meek the geek shall inherit the Earth”