Four Things That Are Definitely Going to Happen, Volume 1

Posted by Pinky on May 9, 2010 in Blog | 3 comments

Hold your hats on for this one, ladies and gentlemen. I have JUST been contacted by The Great Gonzini with 4 predictions for the future.  In honor of Mother’s Day, I present to you Four Things That Are Definitely Going to Happen, Volume 1.

facebook

1.) Designing for the facebook environment will become a very hot focus in the very near future. People have been developing applications for facebook for a relatively long time (I built eCommerce apps for one of my favorite clients two years ago), but watch for facebook fan pages to become much more versatile and interactive. They are intentionally generic now, which many people describe as “clean,” but that is in comparison to MySpace, which is chaotic and cluttered.  Now, facebook is more-often compared to Google and Apple than to its old-school “Web 2.0″ counterparts. facebook can and will enhance its developer tools to allow things like collapsable facebook menus and page margins so you will have a more natural web browsing experience, but within the confines of the facebook network. (I swear, it’s AOL all over again, except that this time users are migrating INTO the walled-garden rather than out of it, as they did for the “world wide web.”)

Touch Screen

2.) It will take more time, but websites will begin to be programmed with touch-screen capabilities en-mass. We’re already used to interacting with our “smart phones” in this way, but websites are still a very mouse-and-keyboard-oriented experience. As more people visit sites with iPad-like devices (and there will be many devices), the more of an audience there will be to engage, which will require using a different tactile sensibility.  I think the trend for this is probably 3 years out, but 100% going to happen.

Location

3.) Location Location Location – If you’re in Silicon Valley right now, you’re already over Four Square and Gowalla (though you are secretly just jealous that Four Square is being valued at 80 million dollars.) If you’re outside of major metropolitan areas however, it is statistically LIKELY that you have never even heard of them. Combining geo-location with mobile applications is an epic, mega-trend that will probably be used in some form 100 years from now, assuming we survive 2012. Combining where you are with what you can do, view and use on your mobile device (notice I didn’t call it a phone) is a *very* big deal. As with any trend though, there are many competitors in the space. Fortunately, there are also many investors investing in the space. And what does that spell boys and girls?

BUBBLE!

You guest it!  There will be buzz buzz buzz about location for a little while.  Then everyone will get sick of the buzz and it will be a passe term.  But THEN, it’s going to exist and not be that big of a deal, and THAT is when it will have changed the way we view the world digitally, and fundamentally.

Don’t believe me?  Just ask yourself what the term “social network” meant to you in 2002.  Unless you were a very early adopter and on Friendster, you had no idea what it meant.  But by 2005, we had MySpace, facebook, Ning, YouTube, Bebo, Orkut, Hi Five and the rest, and every new business plan included some “web 2.0″ functionality in the recipe.  Today, we don’t think “social networking” is all that big a deal.  I mean, even my dentist has a facebook fan page.  Let me repeat that… MY DENTIST HAS A FAN PAGE.  For the record, that’s how you know when something has gone mainstream.

Point being, social networking changed everything, beginning in approximately 2002.  Now, location is going to change everything, but it may be 7 – 10 years before it is so pervasive you can’t remember life without it.  Weird, huh?

And my final prediction for the day is not a prediction at all, but an observation:

Routine

I am convinced that Farmville is as popular as it is, with 11,000,000 people logging in to tend to their farms daily, because it instills routine.  Left brains love that kind of structure and right brains love the exciting options they have once they’re there.  It creates that routine by TIMING your visits.  When you plant grapes, for example, it will take them 24 hours to mature until they can be picked.  If you don’t come back in time though, they will wither, losing their value.  No one wants to kill the plants they wasted all this time fake-seeding, so they come back to pick the crops. And once the crops have been picked, the field is just begging to be tilled and replanted, so the cycle begins anew.  Throw in a little facebook friend interaction and you have a winning formula… as long as people like the experience once they get there.

So that’s it for the special Mother’s Day edition of the Pinky Gonzales blog.  And here’s the bonus.

If you can combine all that stuff into one solid business idea, submit it to http://JumpStartFoundry.com.  I promise it will be reviewed and might even be good enough to merit a $15,000 investment and a team of well-seasoned entrepreneurs to bring it to market.

Word to your moms,

-Pinky