Wednesday, November 12, 2008

One Machine / Many Windows

I highly recommend watching this video about the next 5,000 days of the web. It's 19 minutes long but worth the time to better understand how the web is likely to evolve.

From the perspective of an advertising agency, there are several interesting nuggets:

1. We need to get better at believing in the impossible. It sounds trite, but as Kelly says, who could have imagined that Wikipedia or Craigslist would work so well?

2. The web is one huge machine with many windows. Each computer, cell phone, monitor - they are all just windows into the central "machine" that is the web.

3. Attention is a currency. Getting people to pay attention will be increasingly hard to do, and given freely only to personalized interests. Brands will have to do a better job of customizing messages for individual interests, and ensure they have compelling stories to tell. Everything else will be ignored with impunity.

4. Total personalization requires total transparency. In other words, customizing things for people requires that they share their personal data freely. Privacy is going to be a huge issue here. How much will people trust that their data will not be misused? And how long before a brand misuses freely given data and pays a heavy price? We already see the beginnings of this problem with email SPAM and loyalty clubs at retailers.

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