2008-10-28

Digital trends 2009?

My friend Cris Caanen just posted a question on LinkedIn regarding his thoughts on digital trends in 2009. I thought his analysis was very interesting and insightful so I thought I would post it here for everyone to read together with my own answer to his thoughts. If you have any ideas or answers to his questions - please post them at LinkedIn but also here as comments.

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Hello everybody.

After doing online research I summed up the digital trends for 2009. I'm wondering if anyone in my Linkedin network can assist me in completing and verifying this list. I wrote about this list in my blog too, and I will try to see if there are common grounds between the results. Please assist me in completing the list from your personal and professional perspective. If you think a mentioned trend is not going to be a trend please substantiate your claim.


*mobile internet
*crowdsourcing
*personal branding
*online games/ advergaming
*google chrome
*video job applications and vacancies
*new commerce (changes in the value chain. physical shops will serve as advise and test centres and online *shops will facilitate the purchasing of goods)
*further GPS integration in our lives
*Identity 2.0 protection (People will start trying to protect their online identity even more)

Please feel free to comment on my observations and moreover, feel free to complete or adjust the list.

In addition, feel free to explain more in detail what each of these trends means. I'm looking forward to read some clear elaborations and/or examples on these subjects.

Thanks for your assistance!

Greets,

Cris Caanen
www.igearinternet.nl

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Cris,

This was a really interesting summary of 2008 movements and I think a good prediction of what we will see more of in coming years. Some of them are more obvious than others I think.

Mobile internet is inevitable and with phones like iPhone, Android and others we will probably see an explosion of services available for customer - everywhere and all the time.

Some of them - like crowdsourcing and online games / advergamng - we've already seen a lot of, but I think there's still much more to see.

The GPS is interesting. I myself have thought of at least a couple services the last year which I would like to have and when GPSs get more common and built into our mobiles we will see the use of them increase even more I think. I'm looking forward to this trend!

I also agree with "new commerce" - I have a friend of mine whose company are now starting up a new shop in central Stockholm. They don't expect to sell that much in this store - but they think it's great advertisement for their webpage where they expect to increase in instead.

I am not so sure about the "Identity 2.0 Protection" though. I think you are right in that the use of Identity 2.0 will increase during the next coming years, but I am not sure that protection of them will be a main focus. I think the focus will be on services surrounding Id 2.0 and what can be done with this - and protection and security might become bi-products of this.

New trends you haven't mentioned? Hard to say. I think you've got most of them. What about viruses for mobiles - this is not something we have seen so far, but I am sure it will come with the new generation of smart phones. I also think the trend with new forms of interaction with the computer will increase - both in serious applications like speech recognition, multi-touch screens and in more playful applications like Wii remote, movement sensors in controls/cameras/mobiles and other "new" forms of interaction with technology. I also think we will see a major increase in online applications - office programs moving online (like Google Doc) and perhaps start to be equals of programs running on your own computer - online OS like icloud - or online backup and storage.

Regards
- Anders Ivarsson