Digital Trends & Predictions

Mert Caner – http://tr.linkedin.com/in/canermert October 2014

We Have 4 Big Trends These Days

Mobile

Social

Big Data

Cloud

Whether you are in the retail, FMCG, automative or any industry else, your digital stragety should be defined and your tech structure should be constructed according to these 4 trends.

Mobile: Small Screens & Big Opportunities

It’s The Most

Almost every «consumer» has a mobile phone and ordinary mobile phone user check these devices 140 times per day. Mobile phone is the most personal thing these days and if you find a way to be there, then you’ll become a part of their personality.

On the other hand, there are millions of apps now and as a brand, having an app on every platform is not enough, only a few apps are being used on daily basis. So it’s a big oppurtunity but it’s not easy to catch it.

Personal Thing

It Has Changed The Rules of Communication

Mobile has come into our life with it’s own rules. In the world of mobile, we use apps and bookmarks are dead! Web sites should be responsive and simple and «Candy Crush» is not a new thing at all but as it designed for mobile, it’s a new thing indeed.

Mobile traffic and usage rate is growing but it’s still in progress. One of the biggest obstacle is «working from mobile is hard except sending e-mails». Brands should consider every aspects of mobile cause sometimes using SMS are provides more benefits and it might be more innovatite than having a fancy iPhone App.

Easy To Adapt It To Everything, Hard To Make It Live Forever

We’re able to see a menu at Starbucks through augmented reality, able to check and control stuff at our house and able to find specific place on earth... Even we do payment now. On the other hand, there are millions of apps in our life now and having an app on every platform is not enough, only a few apps are being used. So it’s a big oppurtunity but it’s not easy to catch it.

So What’s Next?

As video consumption volume increases, mobile becomes the second TV. In the highlight of this, advertisement on YouTube or video ads on Facebook will become a part of our life. Brands will produce video ads for only mobile. While the video consumption rises, view rates of long videos (longer than 30 sec) decreases. 6 sec. video app Vine and video feature of Instagram has simply changed the perception of people regarding watching video. Short and remarkable ones survive and the others become thrash sooner than ever. Even Gifs may become more important in the next days. Mp3 is suddenly gone and now we stream music from apps like Spotify or Deezer. We find an unknown song with Shazam, reach all the radio stations around the world with TuneIn Radio or Pandora. Even payment is one of the most conservative thing and payment methods has changed only for a few times, by the mobile payment services like Square, people are able to pay with their mobile now. Mobile is the easiest way of giving shape to everything around digital.

Social: Once You’re In, It Won’t Let You Out

It’s not «Customers» anymore, It’s «Community».

Brands should aware regarding this fact: People are stronger than ever against brands. They are not just «customers» anymore, they move together and become a «Community».

They express all their feelings publicly, sometimes they organize and start a negative campaign against a brand in minutes. Brands have to communicate with their community, show that they care about this community and drive them to the right points.

Rise of the Niche Social Media Channels.

You can do so many things on Facebook or Twitter but you can’t find a job, you can’t «be a photographer» or find an answer to a specific question on your mind. Therefore social grows vertically instead of horizontally and niche social networks get more attention than before. On the other hand, users still spends most of their time on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Quora – Your Best Source For Knowledge It’s a Q&A platform where Barack Obama may give a response to your question.

Behance - Showcase & Discover Creative Work You may find a Cannes winner is actually «inspired» from a work on Behance.

Snapchat - Enjoy fast and fun mobile conversation! Snapchat rejected Facebook's $3 billion offer. Here is hy they did that.

Yammer - Enterprise Social Network Loved by 85% of the Fortune 500 – Including Shell.

Let’s make a test. How many of below social networks have you heard or used?

In fact, Entire Web is Social and Sometimes Local Channels Are The Strongest Ones

Since the social networks became a part of marketing, then we need to monitor what’s going on to understand our community better. Then, we found out, sometimes local channels have more conversation volume than social networks and actually entire web is social now. It’s Web 2.1 now. An internet forum may have more conversation volume than Social Networks regarding your brand. Users make comments under articles by Facebook login. So brands have to monitor entire web and try to meet with where the brand’s community is. On the other side, for global brands there is also a «Local Social Channels» obstacle. Let’s check «the other Facebooks»...

Sina Weibo – China Weibo = Microblogging in China. Microblogging = Twitter. Sina Wibo = Twitter of China. %30 of Chinese internet users are using Weibo. Vkontakte – Russia Russians have their own search engine Yandex, their own mail service and of course their own Facebook(s). To reach Russians you should be active in VK (or the 2nd most popular social networking site Odnoklassniki.com) instead of Facebook.

Donanimhaber.com – Turkey One of the most popular forums in Turkey and because of this popularity and it’s content, it rules the search results.

Any Predictions?

Facebook have more active users on mobile than desktop. It simply shows how mobile and social should be integrated. Social Networks which are strong in mobile side will survive and the others will be gone. Applications on social networks are almost dead and all the campaigns, reach and interaction are based on content and community management. «Content is king» as before but more importantly «User Generated Content is queen». It’s easy to say «Facebook shows only paid contents» but the truth is the little store on the corner of your street has a Facebook page now and it shares more warm and interesting content than huge brands boring brand messages. Little store appears on newsfeed instead of billion dollar companies. So brands with real «social» attitude will win the internet in the future. Twitter is the biggest chance for real time marketing.(Please see the next slide for some examples) Brands who have moved accordingly generate more buzz than the others. Others will understand it soon and will be there too. On the other hand, Nielsen and Twitter have made an agreement which is called Nielsen Twitter Rating. It’s still in progress but as soon as it becomes a real life we’ll finally have a chance to see a usage of traditional channel and a new media channel together. We can count on these predictions for YouTube, Tumblr or Google+ but in the conclusion social grows and in the next 10 years, some big brands may have a position like «Chief Social Officer».

Real Time Marketing On Twitter?

Real Time Marketing On Twitter?

Big Data: It’s The New Oil.

«Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.’’ - William Edwards Deming

(1900 – 1993)

It Keeps Getting Bigger And Bigger Everyday

We are doing searches, shopping online, being social, using mobile... All these activities generating new data and it’s out of control now. Every year overall data volume increases and it’s estimated that Internet will contain 1.3 Zettabyte data by 2016. It’s approx. 1.300.000.000.000 Gigabyte. However, the point is not how big it’s. Analysing, understanding and using it effectively is more important. At that point, according to some researches, so many companies will invest in big data researches more than previous year.

R.I.P. Paul The Octopus, We Have Big Data Now

Now we’re discussing about analyzing billions of search engine queries to predict flu outbreaks or thousands of airline stats to find the best time to buy plane tickets. Unlike last World Cup, we didn’t expect an octopus to predict the results, we had Microsoft’s Bing Predictions. So why would we try to understand and predict the next consuming trend by using Big Data? We’ll start to predict the unpredictable in the next years if we can figure the main problems around big data.

What Are The Next Possible Big Things? If we can analyse «Big Data» then we can simply understand «What They Buy?», «How they behave?», «How they might respond to our next product or service?» so «Big Data» seems the miracle that government leaders, scientists, health officials, corporate leaders, education specialists and marketers have been waiting for but we should consider big data is made by people and if people involve in it, it may be manipulated. So it’s not reliable at all.(Statistics can still lie) At that point, we need advices of modern data scientist regarding our information is reliable or not. So big data will probably become a new sector and brings so many new people and new companies. As it’s backboned by an open source software Hadoop, it’s possible to be continued in this way and companies may start to have their own big data team inhouse instead of working with 3rd parties. Also big tech companies may do key acquisitions to better understand and analyse big data. Another problem about big data is verifying a correlation between two different things. It’s good at catching the big changes of different trends within the same period but it’s not possible to know which of them are correlated. In a nutshell, big data is here to stay and it’s an important source for analyzing data but first we have to remove question marks around it.

Cloud: It’s Everywhere

It’s Integrated With The Other Big Trends

Most of the internet users thought storage services like Dropbox or a service whereby shared resouces software via all devices over a network like iCloud but in fact it’s more than that. It’s simply hiring your computing needs over internet, also cloud is the carrier of other 3 forces and it’s inside them... Mobile is our personal cloud and we reach our files from all devices we have, social media is driven by cloud and when we upload a video to YouTube it actually stored in the clouds or when we post our photos to our Facebook page those photos are stored in the clouds as well. Finally, big data is the reason of we need cloud. As the physical storage is not robust at all (and also it’s not enough), we store our data on the cloud.

It’s easy to reach and use and even SMBs can have access to this game-changing solution. Now almost anyone can put an application on the internet and support it via the cloud without the backend infrastructure which was previously needed.

What Are The Benefits And Threads of Cloud? Cloud is flexible (*Hybrid Cloud), as you pay you use it reduces expenses and have support it increases effieciency. While everything seems fine for cloud computing, there are two concerns about the cloud storage services: Security and data losses. Dropbox has hacked for several times and some users claim that their files were suddenly dissappeared from the cloud service, they’re gone. Recently iCloud accounts of Hollywood Celebrities were hacked and their «improper» photos has leaked to the Internet. Basicly cloud users always have security risks. In accordance with that there is a serious compliance issues for big companies which should store much of it’s data «off the cloud». Cloud has so many benefits and risks but it’s the future of Information Technics, it has risks but these risks are managable with some extra effort.

Thank You