SxSW observations. Privacy comes out of the closet. Digital manufacturing gets accessible. Social responsibility emerges as a cool thing to do. Actions beat advertising when it comes to marketing. And more.
You have decided not to tell Facebook your home phone number.
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Guess what? They know it. It’s in a friend’s contacts and
she forgot to conceal it.
Do you have any idea how many trackers are following
you when you visit a website?
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Often there are 40 or more trackers taking note of
your IP and cookies.
Your meta data reveals where you’ve been,
who you’ve been with, how long you’ve been there?
Do you want the government, Google, or Facebook to know you’re
visiting gay sites, gun sites, porn sites, or political party sites?
Do you even know how many companies you’ve allowed
to access your Twitter feed?
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When is the last time you checked your settings?
Prediction:
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Consumers will pay more attention to privacy.
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There is an opportunity for social and Internet brands
to promote and endorse end-to-end encryption.
!
New tools will gain traction.
Once, computers were only available to
large corporations.
!
Then came the personal computer.
Once, printing presses were only
available to media giants and publishers.
!
Then came desktop publishing.
Once, milling machines were only available
to large factories.
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Then came digital manufacturing.
Now, $650 buys you a milling machine.
!
Free software (EASEL) makes manufacturing
as easy as blogging.
Prediction:
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The maker movement will go mainstream.
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Larger brands, retailers, big box stores will modify business models
to accommodate the new interest.
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A smaller percentage of goods will be made in China.
Prediction:
!
More and more brands will do rather than tell.
!
Consumer participation will be essential to all
good marketing ideas.
!
Content will be created by the brand, the user
and the experience itself.
Lack of clean drinking water kills
millions of children every year.
No health organization has the resources or
infrastructure to bring clean water to remote areas
in Paraguay or Ghana.
Coca Cola is the one brand whose tentacles
reach to the most distant corners of the world.
Partnering with DEKA, Coke transport the parts
to build EKO Centers and bring the
Slingshot clean water system to those who need it most.
Prediction:
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More brands will find value in social responsibility.
!
Innovative partnerships and collaboration
will create opportunities for both parties.
!
More of the world’s problems will be solved
by for-profit corporations.
Your DNA will help you track your ancestors,
determine the source of your personality traits, and maybe even
prevent disease in both you and larger communities.
Founder Anne Wojcicki previously worked on Wall Street
investing in companies that made money off of treatment rather
than prevention. Treatment of preventable diseases — obesity and
diabetes for example — is a multi-billion dollar business.
But lots of companies compete to make money
off of treatment. Why not make money off of prevention?
Prediction:
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Personal data is the new gold rush.
!
Profit motives will be disguised as being more altruistic
than they actually are.
!
Consumers will come to expect and even rely on data
about their health, DNA, lifestyle, energy consumption and more.
!
New moral issues — breeding better offspring — will
challenge social and legal standards.