I just watched this new TED talk by a guy named ‘Kevin Slavin’ and it blew my mind a little. Especially his Netflix example, because this sparked a thought about a part of the future of advertising. Here we go …
When Netflix’s recommendation engine/algorithm is not trying to show you what you might like in general, but what you like to watch next, the target of advertising can change dramatically. If this algorithm determines about 60% of all movie choices on Netflix, because the movies this engine chooses for you are the movies that will appear on your Netflix homepage, and companies like Time Warner get paid based on how much their movies are being watched, the goal of their advertisements will change. Suddenly Time Warner’s advertising doesn’t want to directly influence what you want to watch now or in the near future and with this go around Netflix’s algorithm. But it wants to influence your whole movie watching behavior, because then it has an impact on the actual result of Netflix’s algorithm and that leads to their movies being featured first on your Netflix homepage. Whoaa… Mindfuck 2020.
Here is my prediction. Not really a positive one, but hey ;)
Here we go:
I think Facebook will become the back-end of our entire digital life. And because our life will be drivin by things digital, it will become our login to nearly everything.
I always like to say:
2010 - It’s all about real-time: Twitter is big, Ashton streams live video from anywhere, you watch backstage of the Oscars right when the Oscars are going on. Etc etc. I see my friend checking in the bar downstairs, I walk down to meet him. Our digital interaction is driven by real-time.
2020 - It’s all about personalization: When MySpace re-launched a couple of month ago, you could register using your Facebook account. The line said “Turn your Facebook Likes into real content”, because MySpace will read your likes and suggest music videos etc based on them. The experience is still a little shitty, but it’s a start. I believe by 2020 we will have reached a point where nearly everything will be personalized. When you log on ESPN, you will see YOUR teams, what YOUR friends have bet on etc. You are allergic to nuts? When you look at a menu in a restaurant, you will not see the dishes that contain nuts. And these are just two straight forward examples. There will be ways of personalization coming up that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Facebook and other platforms have some this data already, so the next 8-10 years will be the time new ways of managing that data will rise. Basically gathering more data and develop the right algorithms to use it.
And who will have the most data? You guessed it! Facebook.
My Dad always used to say “Our freedom will be taken away piece by piece.” In terms of our personal information on Facebook one of those pieces came out a good year ago when Facebook released their Social Plug-Ins. Little tools like a Facebook comment box or the LIKE button you can embed into your blog. The LIKE button started out as a “one-click comment functionality” inside the Facebook platform. It’s an awesome idea! One click and you give away instant appreciation to whatever your friend has to say or show. And now you could embed this LIKE button directly into your blog, news website or whatever. But the social value of this button on your website is actually not that high. In the Facebook news-feed these LIKES don’t get as much attention as status updates. And the chance your friend visits the same article that you read and sees that you liked it, is pretty small. Website owners however are hoping that when you like something on their site, your friends will read it too and that gives them new visitors. For Facebook’s data gathering however, the LIKE button is brilliant. Every time you like something, Facebook gathers more and more information about your interests.
Facebook knows more about its citizens that any government. This massive database will make it the backend of our entire digital life-style. And this will change Facebook from a platform I will go to, to be the middle man.
For Facebook being the middle man might be the biggest power they can reach, because if Sport.com pays Facebook a billion dollars to become the only Sports channel to use the Facebook database, Facebook could cut off ESPN’s connection and ESPN would fall back into a non-personal experience like it was in 2010 and with this it’s not able to compete anymore.
This is just a part of my prediction, the side that’s less scary and more fascinating is how it will effect the life of us users … so to be continued …
XOXO Gossip Leif
if you don’t risk them, you don’t try and not trying is a mistake.
A couple of weeks ago Christian and I were speaking at the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany. The whole festival was about the music industry and the challenges that business and their artists have due to the digitalization.
I thought it was kinda funny that I was sitting there talking with professionals out of the music industry about the challenges their business has right now, even tho I’ve never worked in the music industry and have nearly zero knowledge about it. But that’s just what I thought.
The great thing of working in ‘Digital’ is that you are not just in the business of digital, you are in the business of everything. Because the things you think about every day are not just about how you can talk about a product nicely but how you can lead a brand in a world that is digital and that goes far beyond just communication.
Digital reached a point where it effects every business and the few people knowing how to deal with digital can adapt that knowledge to nearly every business.
I saw this TED talk of Sir Ken Robinson again the other day about ‘how schools kill creativity’ and how a brilliant creative mind thinks in terms of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if …’ and an educated mind, or also a mind that is full of experience, thinks in terms of ‘if it is like this, I can do …’
Of course there are many parts of life where experience matters. Otherwise you would touch everything that glows and burn to death. But in an always changing world like the one we live in right now, does experience really help you to be awesomely creative?
I like to create a theory right now: In the Digital Age ‘Zeitgeist’ wins against ‘Experience’.
Because for creatives in this always changing world it’s more about being at the top of things and knowing some ground rules than having the years of experience.
One of my student creative teams from the Miami Ad School have made this their advantage. They see themselves as “The Team in the Now” with a team name that always changes based on what the most talked about topic on Twitter is at the moment. Pretty awesome.