A quiet thought as I log my timesheets for the week into an eBusiness suite.
The web has been steadily moving through the vowels and I am picking the last two could in fact be far more influential than the first three.
- A The @ symbol that kicked off the first mass communication system over the internet with email addresses.
- E we then had to prefix all our traditional communications with e to make them email friendly
- eCard
- e-Alert
- e-Zine
- eBusiness
- and later eCommerce
- I – well we all know what came next. Apple with the iPod, iPhone, iPad which ultimately have made mobile first, a phrase everyone’s shouting. Now anything sleek and portable trying to be cool follows suit with iStuff.
- Only O and U are left.
My pick is that these will be Omnipresent and Ubiquitous.
- Seamless sharing like we see from Path, marking our locations into their social network as our cell phone jumps from tower to tower.
- Everything will be connected over WiFi. Fridges with feeds can already pre-order your weekly shop. The list of houshold connections will continue to grow.
- And we’ll see more objects communicating to each other online, prioritising your drive home (should you need to pick up something that can’t be delivered in 24hrs).
But perhaps the U in fact brings the power back to Us. As we gather all our browsing and shopping data to form online experiences, services and physical products that are truly fitting with our lifestyles and needs.
Companies send us trials of the Nick Allen limited edition. Now that would be great.
Nick Allen - Marketing, Growth & Running 