2012: Its Only Just Begun...

2012 may, for some, mean the end is nigh.  For the rest of us, however, it means a new year with new speculations on what the calendar will hold.  In the digital world things change rapidly, though with a degree of foresight we can look at what the year might hold and stories that might unfold -apocalypse withstanding.  Here I will look at the worlds of Social Media and Marketing, how technology might affect daily life and the wider picture in this coming year.

Social Media

2012 marks the year Facebook goes public in “one of the most hotly anticipated flotations in US corporate history” and “the biggest internet public offering since Google” – according to the Guardian’s Media and Technology reporter Josh Halliday.  With estimates on the network’s worth hovering around the $100bn mark, many are hotly anticipating April’s deadline for Zuckerberg to announce Facebook’s profit margins.

Elsewhere expect Social Media to continue to blur into other aspects of our lives; as customer service, entertainment and commerce continue to collide with networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  Companies such as Netflix and Spotify are uniting with Social Media platforms to attempt to curb piracy and create an integrated online one-stop-shop where all online activities exist within a social network, while e-commerce sites will continue integrating to Social where higher conversion rates and better customer understanding await those that are smart about it.

From a business perspective B2C Social Media engagement will be more important than mere presence.  Quality rather than quantity will apply more than ever in 2012 as more networks mean more to choose from to promote brands and services.  As Cindy King puts it: “The old mantra of ‘be everywhere’ is quickly being replaced with ‘be where it matters to our business.’”

Social Media, especially Twitter, will continue to play a part in the emerging dialogue on freedom of speech and information.  The Leveson enquiry, online protests such as the current battle against SOPA and the controversial relationship between social networks and civil unrest promise to continue to play out in 2012 with reactionary proposed legislation instigating impassioned rhetoric in the fields of politics, internet and information-based services and the media. While the issue of piracy could reach boiling point with new laws emerging and tougher regulation systems.


Technology, Innovation and Daily Life

Going on 2011’s progress towards an interconnection between aspects of our daily life with cloud-based technologies, such as Ford’s cloud connected ‘Evos’ car, it is widely believed that 2012 be the year we start laying the groundwork towards an Internet of Things.
Phones in general will get more powerful in 2012, with devices such as the HTC Edge –“ the first quad-core mobile phone with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor”-, Galaxy Nexus and rumours of an iPhone 5 highly anticipated this year.  As phones get more powerful companies like Motorola with their Atrix phone are pushing towards docks that turn your smartphone into a laptop in a growing trend towards a single, highly powerful and adaptable device that performs multiple functions.

Phones are replacing cameras, the iPhone was announced as the world’s most popular camera recently, and next on the humble phone’s list of devices to conquer is the credit card as NFC and m-commerce continues to pick up speed this year with large-scale companies such as Visa and Google investing in the new technology and research predicting the mobile virtual currency market to hit 4,8bn by 2016.  Although critics say we won’t be leaving our wallets at home just yet this year NFC and mobile payments are part of wider trend in which commerce is moving towards more integration, convenience and multiple channels.

Another everyday product that is being digitally revolutionized is the TV, which after 2011’s move towards integrated Smart TVs is the next thing on many technology companies’ hit-lists to master, including a company you may have heard of called Apple.  Apple hasn’t announced anything official regarding their foray into TV but it is widely thought to be the next step for the company post-Job’s death.  Smart TV’s have the potential to become, like the phone, a major integrated digital product that replaces the PC as we know it, showcasing Apps, integration into other devices and functions and our Social networks like never before.

The other big buzz-word for 2012 is Augmented Reality which has the potential for real innovation this year.  Marketing promotion, functionality, task support (for things such as surgery or parts assembly), navigation, entertainment, education and art are all areas in which AR has the potential to innovate.  This year however expect AR to feature more heavily in devices, gaming and promotional activity.  The possibilities are quite exciting.  
Voice recognition is also a showstopper of a technology which after adoption by Microsoft Kinect and the iPhone 4S’s Siri in 2011 may begin to appear in other aspects of daily life from Smart TVs to household products. However it may still be a while before human’s and computers have seamless conversations if the misunderstandings Siri encountered last year are anything to go by.


Wider View

If 2011 was defined by radical social unrest globally and a question of freedom of information, I believe digital and technological progress in 2012 will hinge on legislation changes, lawsuits and whether the Internet is able to continue empowering groups and individuals.
I think 2012 will be a year when many of the connections, institutions, businesses and products that were lost or are in danger of being washed away by the digital revolution will learn to utilise our new digital landscape to rebuild, reconnect and survive.  If they’re smart.

by Elle Holgate

Links / Sources:
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8517-social-media-in-2012-the-expert-view?utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=mobile
http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/news-internet-trends-2012.html#ixzz1jtlVCrtb
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30698.asp
http://www.fastcompany.com/1776893/augmented-reality-outfit-junaio-aims-at-a-sci-fi-future-with-object-recognition?partner=rss
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30723.asp?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ImediaConnectionAll+%28iMedia+Connection%3A+All+Stories%29
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8645-mobile-virtual-currency-market-to-hit-4-8bn-by-2016-report?utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=mobile

Tribute to An Undeniable iCon

by Elle Holgate

A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see – and hits it. ~Anon

Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age.  ~Napoleon
Bonaparte

Where-ever you stand on the Apple vs. Microsoft lifestyle choice debate, the recent news of Steve Job’s untimely death hit the industries of digital media, technology, advertising, music, design, software andfilm with as much impact and fanfare as the hysteria that new Apple product launches have become known for.
Reading through online newsfeeds in the days following his death it was clear, this wasn’t a man whose contribution was exclusive to one field or discipline but one that cross fertilized between different industries successfully.  His vision, leadership, influence, and ultimately products, were and remain omnipresent in almost all aspects of modern industry, art and commerce.  That the company he headed was started in the back of his garage and not taken seriously by industry insiders and only accounting for 1% of the computing industry for the last decades of the past millennium, just highlights the greatness of his achievements in a relatively very short time.

Along the way to greatness Jobs was savvy, creative, hungry, a little bit foolish, at times undeniably ruthless and always exceptional.  He resourcefully grabbed the opportunities of the era in which he came of age, utilized and re-designed inventions that were under- developed and tapped some great minds that he met along the way.  David Kokkte (later an integral early Apple employee) said in a recent interview; “Steve paid a lot of attention to those doing good work”, and Jobs-himself confirmed that “Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team.”  He was an innovator, not an inventor and despite this, perhaps because of it, he goes down in history as an icon in a broad arena of human ideas, progress and creative brilliance.

To understand what drove Jobs in his c0-creation of Apple it has often been sited, even celebrated, that he was a college drop out, once traveled to India on a hippie pilgrimage and openly stated that his experimentation with psychedelics at that time was “one of the two or three most important things I’ve ever done in my life.”  It may seem sensationalist to highlight this yet these early countercultural aspects of his life remained, if you look closely, fairly fundamental to his life’s work until the end.

Jobs and Kokkte traveled to India after reading seminal hippie tome ‘Be Here Now’ and gaining interest in Buddhism, which Jobs converted to with gusto.  These idealistic hippie ideologies were then applied to Job’s and Wozniak’s vision for personal, and later home, computing as a creative empowerment for the ordinary individual and masses.  You could liken their journey for spiritual enlightenment in India to their quest to reach the nirvana of what technology could be and the coming phenomenon of the information revolution: “between the iPhone and the Internet and Google, all the knowledge of the world is in your hand, that’s a miracle […] What someone can do with their iPhone is magic!“ Kokkte has said.

Perhaps it was this search for magic, knowledge, enlightenment and minimalist brilliance can be seen quite clearly at the heart of Job’s product design, which has set Apple apart in the tech industry.  Only now are technology makers accepting that aesthetic and design are not only the superficial identity of the product but can, and should, be linked to its functionality and user experience.

“Steve was the marketing person [and] brought the design aspect to it.” Kokkte says of his experience of Apple’s early days. 

Job’s designs set the bar for computing, portable mp3 players, smartphones and most recently tablets, with every product spawning a string of copycat designs running throughout the industry.  Since the iPhone it is sometimes hard to see at first glance which smartphones are actually Apple following the adoption of the ‘i’ look of slick touch-screen interface and minimalist mini-tablet functionality.  Or take the recent launch by Asus and Intel of the ‘Zenbook’ (reference to Buddhism or Macbook anyone?) it couldn’t be anymore Apple if it was sat in a basket of Pink Ladies.  From the brushed chrome casing, the effort for slimness and the low easy keyboard.  Even the interface seems to have been paired down in a minimalist style, as if to trick the eye that it might be the 11.6-inchMacBook Air.  In my humble (and a few other’s) opinion the exterior of these copy cat products have never held the same level of ergonomic excellence within.  So OK I’ll admit it, I’m an Apple fan kid.  Sue me.
Job’s value for creativity, his single focus and the minimalist and high quality aesthetic he pioneered in technology design all were informed by a fearless experimental mindset, and has always added to his image as a maverick, cultural icon and a rebel of rock n roll proportions.  Being fired from Apple only to re-emerge the victor only cemented this.  As one aging rock star branded him last week, Job’s was in many ways; ‘The Bob Dylan of Machines…the Elvis of the hardware-software dialectic”, fitting as Rolling Stone prepares a commemorative issue for release.  His presentations as CEO of Apple show a man playing to his audience with the swagger and deft touch of an artist on stage.  Iconic, even down to his ever-present black turtleneck, his attire as recognizable, minimal and ergonomic as the casing for Apple products themselves.

Apple’s revolutionary insistence of integration amongst their products and harmony between different functions were always highlighted in the finished product, first most evident in the “plug and play” experience of an iPod and Mac. Integration this sophisticated just hadn’t been done before, and the sheer enjoyment of using a technological product, which was key to Job’s designs, took Apple to the next level.  As the Harvard Business review wrote last week: “Apple existed to delight customers first”, all else fell into place around that, and it worked.

“His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me.” Larry Page of Google.

The designed synchronization between Apple products was criticized by some as a way of trapping people into picking only from the Apple tree, one of many criticisms aimed at Job’s and co throughout the years.  Some felt Apple was creating a “walled garden approach to media on their devices” by taking a 30% cut from subscriptions and sales via their platforms.  Many questioned this as just simply ‘greedy’ and an exploitation of their position as leaders.  Jobs was, after all  a hard-nosed business man for all his cool-credentials.  However his contribution to e-commerce revenue is immeasurable; from the $2.5 Billion in revenue from apps over the last 3 years with 70% going to developers, to the way iTunes addressed the downloading deficit in the music industry.

Yet even for someone who doesn’t buy into Apple, Job’s involvement with Pixar makes him an important figure.  Pixar, which was founded as an offshoot of LucasFilm to develop imaging technology, was bought by Jobs in 1986 after he was kicked out of Apple and then later acquired by Disney.  Under Jobs as CEO Pixar became a technical and creative leader of CGI animated films, Pixar’s John Lasseter saying that Job’s vision guided them; “He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us did.”

When all is weighed up his loss cannot be overstated.  He may not have ever imagined or set out to innovate and revolutionize across multiple industries (he was innately always most interested in technology, software, and design) but he brought something utterly new to this emerging industry and was never afraid to integrate, innovate and move things forward or to borrow from unexpected places to cultivate beauty in a once quite sterile landscape.

The greatest feat he achieved, on a personal level, was producing an operating system that I ‘got’, even enjoyed.  iOS worked intuitively in a way I hadn’t experienced before with computing, which until that point I had loathed and rejected.   iOS and the Apple products around it made computing and interacting with technology easy and encouraged me want to use it.  For the first time I felt instilled the notion that great and creative things could be created on a computer and using modern technology.  For a long-time technophobe and lover of the archaic and low-tech approach that was huge.

It is easy, in hindsight, to brand a person a genius.  In death all accolades are heightened by finality however if ever a man deserves the title, I feel Job’s earned it.  Genius doesn’t mean he was always fair, nice to work with, never wrong, greedy or biased – It just means he shot at something no one else could see, and hit it.  And in doing so lit up our screens, and our age.

RIP Steve Jobs 1952-2011

Techno Remix at Glastonbury

You’d have to have been living in an internet-less basement in Outer Mongolia to have missed noticing: Festivals are a staple of modern British life now.  No longer the domain exclusively of hardened party animals and alternative hippies the truly new-age festival attendee is often fashion conscious, teched up and may even come with an executive job or children, or both (utter madness).  So with the transformation of the festival crowd comes a timely and truly experience-changing innovation to the 'little timetable on a string round your neck thingy': The Official Glastonbury 2011 app.  

Now I’ve been to Glastonbury a good few times but sadly the last time I went phone apps still meant, to most people, the calculator on your Nokia.  This meant that even while vigilantly checking my soggy programme with the dim light of a pocket torth and asking people in neon jackets where the Leftfield music tent is (those neon jacket wearing folk always turn out to be partygoers who are a lot more lost than you and think wearing a neon jacket is the height of festival fashion) hence even with a passable level of effort I still missed some amazing acts and never did find where the Leftfield stage was.

The Glastonbury 2011 App is basically your super-organized, geekily knowledgeable festival comrade, except it fits in your pocket, looks hot and won’t get moody when the teepee’s a mess.  Complete with the entire schedule (no more squinting at a dusty rag of a programme on the last day), a personalized planner so you know where and when your crucial acts are on, an interactive map, the latest news and the ability to share on Facebook this app is the way of the future for a festival that prides itself on eco-friendly alternatives.  Quite frankly it beats said geeky festival friend hands down, especially at knowing about that secret Radiohead gig, and all updates are available at your grubby little fingers throughout the festival.

I spoke to the guys at Brighton-based digital startup Future Platforms who brought this lovely app into being.

Enter Dominic Travers, 14 times Glastonbury veteran and Product Owner of the project at Future Platforms; '[Orange and Glastonbury] wanted us to keep it simple, for us to bring the core features of a festival app to a user-friendly, clever and effective platform and they wanted it to be available not only on iPhone, but be inclusive of other smart phones and android'- no easy task then.

Designing apps for festivals pose some key challenges anyway, as Future Platforms founder Tom Hume points out; 'In many ways Glastonbury is just an extreme testbed for the constraints of mobile which [digital agencies like Future Platforms] have been working with since day one', battery life and signal connectivity issues at a festival site being a challenge.  Also the sheer scale of Glastonbury provides a unique challenge;  'We had well over 2000 complex items, 55 stages and ever-evolving news to factor into the app which test the platform’s capabilities to the extreme.'  Well you wouldn’t expect anything less from one of the largest festivals in the world. 

The project took in total 3 months to complete but was a labour of love for the team, which included Glastonbury fans, and Dominic stated that Orange were ‘a joy to work with’.  However, to paraphrase a well known saying: the proof was in the mud pie.  Buzz about the app went wild in the week running up to the festival with 56,000 mentions on Twitter before the festival had even officially kicked off and user’s resounding approval and grateful reviews ( the favourite being 'Glastonbury App is Well Good!!') before, during and after the event brought delight to the Future Platforms team.  Guardian Music Editor Tim Jonze even added on Twitter that the app was ‘literally the best thing ever.’ -now that’s praise.  Its easy to see why with something that just works, making life a lot easier during a grueling weekend of fun in Somerset.

Glastonbury is not on in 2012 due to the regular four-yearly land break however should Future Platforms work their magic again on the app for 2013 they already have plenty of ideas up their sleeve.  For now they are elated at the response the 2011 app has got and were surprised when even Police officers at the event told them it had proved invaluable in providing information and taking care of business at the festival this year.  This App is, literally, all you’d need to get around, see those un-missable acts, and share it.  I can’t wait to put this newfound technological aid to good use at the next festival.  Now all I need is an iPhone and a Glastonbury ticket for 2013…anybody?