Yet opportunities will emerge from the crisis. It was no accident that John Bogle launched Vanguard, the investment management group, and Charles Schwab founded his brokerage in the wake of the recession of the early 1970s. These companies introduced new value propositions that resonated with consumers. In the same way, new value propositions will emerge from the deficit of trust induced by the current recession. Existing companies need to watch out for the flank attack from such innovative newcomers.
Here’s the trailer for this years Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner.
It’s a film by Ondi Timoner about the possible effects of the Internet and the way in which we are living our lives in public, as seen through the life of Josh Harris.
Makes me wonder when we will start seeing people disconnect from the Internet in a (over) reaction to concerns about losing our privacy.
December 10, 2008 at 9:00am
According to our search behavior on Google, during a time of crisis, uncertainty and economic struggles (i.e. 2008), we long for:
Interaction with other people (social networks)
Distraction from the pain (alcohol)
Food that reminds us of better times (comfort food)
Saving money by doing it ourselves (DIY)
This all seems to make sense to me.
December 4, 2008 at 11:19am
But the most important side effect of more austere times is probably that consumers start questioning what truly makes them happy, which more often than not steers them towards the realization that happiness ain’t (just) about traditional consumption. Expect pockets of consumers to switch to lower-consumption models with surprising ease, and to look for different and less costly sources of happiness and thus, ultimately, status. Any way you can help them with that will be a guaranteed winner.
Recently I came across the site We Feel Fine, which from the site:
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day.
I read this and was intrigued, so I figured I would test it out. Below is my test. I compared the year 2007 to the year 2008 for the US. The list goes on even though I’ve only listed the top 5.
I’m amazed that 2007 and 2008 are so different. What’s most interesting to me is that overwhelmed is number 1 in 2008, even though it’s not even in the top 5 in 2007 (or in the top 16). I think that is actually a very accurate word to describe how people feel in 2008. Also, the fact that used pops up in 2008 is also very telling (it is also not on the list in 2007).
We are feeling overwhelmed and used.
Most representative feelings from 2007
Most representative feelings from 2008
November 19, 2008 at 1:39pm
Prediction: Future Holiday - Unlpug from Internet
I wonder how long before we are so connected that we institute a Holiday in honor of the “old days” wherein we unplug from the Internet? No email, facebook, twitter, search, etc. Maybe 10 years?
Dial Plus is the first new (within the last year) technology product I’m actually excited to use. And they are a great example of how new media can enhance our already established and standardized ways of communicating, like the phone call.
Here’s an explanation from their website for how they work:
DialPlus enriches the standard phone call experience by automatically and simultaneously providing dynamic, contextually relevant visual information about the called or calling party before the call is answered, during the call and after the call is over. DialPlus makes it easy for users to engage in mobile social networking or to get information about a business they’re speaking with, such as directions, menus and reviews.
Apparently they are in “alpha” and will be rolling out to more users early next year.
I love the simplicity and passivity of this idea. It uses all the information that already exists about people, restaurants, businesses, etc. and displays it (in the background, with no work from the user) for easy access. The epitome of Passive Intelligence.
If you can see beyond the cheesy ad on their homepage, and get over the fact that you need to look at your screen while talking, I think there is real potential for this type of application, although I wonder if our mobile Internet connections (and phones) are powerful enough to support this type of use.
Regardless, the use of passive information to enhance our everyday behavior is likely to be a trend that will continue for a while now.
February 7, 2008 at 12:13pm
But five hours with five forecasters was enough to persuade one skeptic that forecasting trends in the design world — finding order and meaning in the mishmash of consumer culture — is as much legitimate discipline as bogus science.
