Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We've done next to nothing with gesture recognition, as a recent article in Ad Age laments. The one small step for consumers onto the bizarre coin-catching rubber raft turns out to be a giant leap for marketers. And that's understandable: To succeed in a space where consumers are themselves still getting their sea legs, marketers not only have to figure out how to make gesture inputs seamless and smooth, but also how to create experiences so compelling that consumers will put in the extra work to interact.
Most marketers could reason that 8 million Kinect users constitutes a niche market that we can afford to neglect in the still-austere year of 2011, but new Kinect developments might be game-changers. In addition to the promise of faster evolution driven by the kind of experiments showcased on the Kinect Hacks blog, Microsoft has hinted that a more accessible software development kit might accompany the launch of a PC-compatible Kinect in 2011. So that touch-optimized web interface you're developing might need to be gesture-optimized sooner than you think.
Gesture recognition
Long the stuff of science fiction, gesture recognition computing suddenly landed with the resounding thunk of 8 million families leaping up and down in front of their televisions, as Microsoft's Xbox Kinect plug-in debuted in late 2010. Marketers, sensing a ripe opportunity to transform their interactions with consumers into something immersive and fun...
Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We've done next to nothing with gesture recognition, as a recent article in Ad Age laments. The one small step for consumers onto the bizarre coin-catching rubber raft turns out to be a giant leap for marketers. And that's understandable: To succeed in a space where consumers are themselves still getting their sea legs, marketers not only have to figure out how to make gesture inputs seamless and smooth, but also how to create experiences so compelling that consumers will put in the extra work to interact.
Most marketers could reason that 8 million Kinect users constitutes a niche market that we can afford to neglect in the still-austere year of 2011, but new Kinect developments might be game-changers. In addition to the promise of faster evolution driven by the kind of experiments showcased on the Kinect Hacks blog, Microsoft has hinted that a more accessible software development kit might accompany the launch of a PC-compatible Kinect in 2011. So that touch-optimized web interface you're developing might need to be gesture-optimized sooner than you think.
Geolocation
While no one has yet been able to explain to me why we needed to coin the word "geolocation" when we already have a perfectly good word that means location -- namely, "location" -- it's clear that both the term and the technologies are here to stay. Yes, I speak of the much-heralded growth of check-in apps like Foursquare and Gowalla and the attendant opportunities for marketers, but that's not where most location-specific brand interactions will take place. On tablets and browsers, geolocation is a potential factor in every browser and app-based interaction with consumers, not just on dedicated geolocation apps. Even on good old-fashioned desktops and laptops, location is increasingly important as search engines begin to put more juice behind local results, ad networks push location-based targeting, and HTML5 location-sniffing gains ground with each new browser release.
To take advantage, marketers need to think conceptually about geolocation rather than chasing after the app of the day. You need to start with big questions like, "What could I offer my prospects that would be different if I already knew their locations?" The answer to that question not only influences mobile strategy but also search engine optimization, paid search and display ads, and web development. Which reminds me...
The doomed website; content aggregation
The death of the website
OK, I admit, your website is not going to die, but it makes for a more provocative subhead than "the increasing de-centering of the website," which is actually what's taking place. The corporate website is losing its centrality as the means by which consumers interact with brands online, and it's not coming back.
The website will, for the foreseeable future, continue to be the primary means of transacting with consumers online, but that's only one small part of marketer-consumer interaction, way down at the bottom of the funnel. Further up the funnel, where consumers compare brands, read reviews, listen to friends, and talk to brands directly, you're far better off meeting up with consumers in the places they like to hang out, like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, as well as blogs, forums, communities, etc.
This requires a tectonic shift in the classic marketer mindset. Even marketers that have fully embraced the idea that their content needs to live in lots of different places still get twitchy at the notion that a promo can live solely on Facebook or Twitter without needing to herd everybody over to the corporate site. That's understandable; digital marketers live and die by the numbers, and site traffic is a number. Marketers won't truly make the leap until social analytics mature, but that's a topic for another day.
Content aggregation
Faced with the constant deluge of digital content produced by consumers, competitors, and peers, the marketer's last tether to sanity is content aggregation, which allows us wrangle the content flood into a manageable, consumable stream. I am, as I write this, using a content aggregator to monitor content about content aggregation, proving that 1) every day, in every way, things are getting meta and meta, and 2) my own frayed tether to sanity has finally snapped.
Simple aggregators like Google Reader and Flipboard can work behind the scenes to mainline relevant content into our marketing veins, but consumers also suffer from content overload and need our help. (Or, at least, they're sometimes willing to accept our help.) Many marketers have embraced content curation as part of their content marketing strategy. Using handy curation tools like Scoop.It, they pluck relevant content out of the ether, slather on a coat of their own content varnish, and package it up for content-addled consumers. Mint.com's much-vaunted MintLife blog is a prime example, but every topic has content worth curating. Marketers who fret about how to sustain content production for their blogs should be first in line for this: The ability to pinpoint good content is often far more valuable than adding new content to the flood
Smartphone users are more likely than non-smartphone users to use other digital technologies, according to new findings from ExactTarget. For example, 45% of smartphone users check email constantly throughout the day, as compared to 28% of non-smartphone users.
Seventeen percent of Facebook users check Facebook constantly from a home computer, and 49% check Facebook daily from home. Facebook usage is relatively rare at work/school: only 4% constantly check Facebook from this location and 18% check it daily. Facebook usage is also rare from tablets, but 10% of Facebook users check constantly from a mobile phone and 16% do so daily.
Twenty-four percent of email users check email constantly from a home computer, and another 63% check email daily from a home computer. These rates are much higher than those of any other email tool. For example, only 16% of email users constantly check email from a work/school computer and 22% check it daily. Rates are minimal for checking email via tablet, while 115 of email users check constantly from a mobile phone and 15% check daily.
