2010. The year of realistic self-assessment.
Januar 5th, 2010 • Allgemein
2010. Another year which will be the year of mobile, of social media ROI, social media CRM , social TV, social commerce, the year of tablets and a lot of other technologies my sister or my dad don’t know anything about. In fact, I believe if it will be the year of anything special at all then it will be another year of failed prophecies.
No doubt, the advance of smartphones and the invention of mobile apps paves the way for the use of the mobile web. The progress made in social technologies opens new possibilities to explore new services in this sector. And hey, that’s great. But let’s please do one thing in 2010: Let’s turn it into the year of realism.
Just because we are in control of the air superiority in our self-invented communities, does not mean it’s relevant for anybody else than the usual suspects. Yes, I love Foursquare. But in my hometown Frankfurt maybe 200 players have registered…in a city of 600K. That’s not exactly what I call reach. Plus, the realities in the use of digital technologies vary to enormous degree even among the U.S., Japan and Europe…and we are not even talking about the 75% which we call ‘the rest of the world’ (like India and stuff).
If I have one professional wish for 2010 it is this. Keep on playing, keep on dreaming…but stop using superlatives when ever you like a certain smartphone or social service. One of the happiest tech moments in my life was when my family had a Skype video call with my step brother’s family in Australia during christmas. They waved, they laughed and they were happy to see each other over such a big distance. And hey, that’s cool, isn’t it? When I saw this scenery, I had the feeling that this (almost old-school piece of tech) had a sense – it simply made people smile and connect – in a very simple way. What a great invention: Skype.
In a cool article today on The State of Technology in 2010, Nextweb wrote:
In 2010 the World Wide Web will unofficially turn 21. Twenty-one is an important age. It is supposed to be the age of maturity. In a way you could say that the web is mature now. It is an individual object, system, movement or organism that has found its place in society. It is here, it is visible and unavoidable and not going away anytime soon. (…)
But what is the meaning of maturity? When you turn 21 you might think that you know everything there is to know and you might even feel very mature. Once you turn 31 or 41 and think back you realize that you were just a child. Now imagine turning 51 or 61? How much do you think will have changed between your 40th and 60th birthday? Now imagine the future of the web.
So please, let us do ourselves one big favor this year. Let’s all calm down a little bit, let’s stick to exploring and inspiring. But let’s remind us that the reality of nowaday’s non-tekkies are far from away from Apple’s iSlate…yet. So let’s buy one (or two if you get it), but stop pretending that we are superhumans simply because we know how to use twitter.
2010 may become the year of the tablet. But please – Let’s turn it into the year of realistic self-assessment.
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http://www.demodern.de/ kristian
