Friday 3 February 2012

Cut-through

A few of the predictions and leaks I've seen and heard about this year could be characterised by being described as things that help people cut-through the ever increasing noise that the Internet provides us. These cut-through things seem to span technologies, Internet consumption tools and the end-users approach to accessing things / managing their digital lives. This last point is something that relates to a much bigger issue for anyone involved in digital. This is the bit we all have to continue to focus on. Properly understanding consumers and Internet users, and as we all know this requires an investment of time & money, but it is critical - and I'd argue this should be baked into "cost of doing digital business" and not an option or a project. This insight will of course help in creating the right cut-through things in the first place.

I don't think the need for noise reduction / better management tools is as simple as creating converging technologies or mash-ups etc.I think this will eventually be fulfilled by organisations treating their digital offerings as things that help with this cut-through need i.e. financial services companies that can look after all your money or information services that can span all your information needs etc. There are examples of offerings like this, but they all offer compromises at the moment. For some these are less compromising than for others, but to go mainstream they will have to be closer to the full service than not to appeal to the majority of people.

Speaking to technologists (really clever people, or "geeks who geek so the civilians don't have to" as @therealmattwebb told me this week) they seem to have started to almost re-think the role of the end-device. And I'd like to see more OS level type things that help cut-through the noise and start to emerge as the management tool we all really need. I think there will be some movement on this front in 2012 so I'm a little more interested in the slightly harder side of things at the moment.

Just a quick thought / prediction.