This year I learned... 2014
1 like3,362 views
In 2014, Amazon made several moves to get directly to consumers through products like the Fire Phone, Fire TV, and Echo, entering competition with Apple, Google, and Facebook. Wearable technology also expanded with many everyday items becoming connected. Virtual reality started to become realized as a new communication platform with Facebook's purchase of Oculus Rift. Smartphones surpassed computers in ownership and websites had to fully adapt to mobile formats. Native digital journalism from sites like Buzzfeed and Vice grew while search traffic and importance declined due to social media. China also emerged as a dominant force in the digital world.
![THE NEXT COMPUTING
PLATFORM IS ALREADY
THERE
In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus Rift for
approximately 2 billion dollars. We heard from
this and similar devices before, but the
acquisition may have been a milesstone. In his
post from March 25, Zuckerberg says:
„This is really a new communication platform. By
feeling truly present, you can share unbounded
spaces and experiences with the people in your
life. […] Virtual reality was once the dream of
science fiction. But the internet was also once a
dream, and so were computers and
smartphones.“
Like computers and smartphones, it won‘t be a
year until all of us own one. But 2014 may have
been the year where we saw it coming, this time
for real.
Image: http://vandrico.com/device/oculus-rift
3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2014technologyisourfriendtyil-141221065111-conversion-gate02/85/This-year-I-learned-2014-4-320.jpg)
This year I learned... 2014
- 1. Evangelos Papathanassiou Technology is our friend THIS YEAR I LEARNED... 2014
- 2. AMAZON PLAYS HARDBALL In the years before, many people speculated about what Amazon could do with its huge user base and stronghold in media. In 2014, they started: Amazon Fire Phone, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Amazon Dash – no matter what you think of the products, stop worrying about drone delivery and see that Amazon gets in the race about “the last mile“ to the consumer, enabling them to participate in any digital advertising and commerce business. If it needs own hardware to get there, then so be it. Welcome Amazon in Google‘s, Apple‘s and Facebook‘s competition to be your primary interface to the digital world. Image: http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo 1
- 3. EVERY DAY WILL BE WEARABLE WEDNESDAY Everything will be connected, dumb products will get smart, and if you thought we already have a hype around this, wait for the years to come. In 2014, we could observe that today‘s technology allows to connect pretty much anything – a suitcase, a baseball cap, of course a watch, a t-shirt, a handbag, jewelry, whatever. IT- and data driven competition will get into markets that have not seen significant disruptions in the past years, new markets and product categories will emerge, and this year we could see with how much speed and traction this development will come. Image: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellobragi/the-dash-wireless-smart-in-ear- headphones 2
- 4. THE NEXT COMPUTING PLATFORM IS ALREADY THERE In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus Rift for approximately 2 billion dollars. We heard from this and similar devices before, but the acquisition may have been a milesstone. In his post from March 25, Zuckerberg says: „This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. […] Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones.“ Like computers and smartphones, it won‘t be a year until all of us own one. But 2014 may have been the year where we saw it coming, this time for real. Image: http://vandrico.com/device/oculus-rift 3
- 5. SMARTPHONES RULE THE WORLD The mobile shift was already in my “This year I learned“ reviews for 2013 and 2012. In 2014, it seems to be completed. More people own smartphones than computers. Many digital businesses see not only their share of mobile traffic over 50%, sometimes mobile exclusive (!) reaches that number. We cannot think of responsive websites anymore, but 2014 is the year where we finally realized that our task is to design systems that publish content to impatient audiences on small screens. Image: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-digital-2014-slide-deck-2014- 12?op=1?r=US 4
- 6. BUT TV IS STILL RESILIENT Year after year after year we expect either a hardware innovation or a massive move of advertising money away from TV to disrupt the existing television business. In 2014 we learned that this did not happen again. There is the massive rise of Netflix, a great number of connected TVs are being sold, Chromecast, Apple TV and many other devices are bringing digital content to the big screen – and still, most TV stations are far away from struggling the way newspapers did a few years ago. Image: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-digital-2014-slide-deck-2014- 12?op=1?r=US 5
- 7. NATIVE DIGITAL JOURNALISM ON THE RISE While traditional TV seems to maintain its strength, digital extensions of traditional media struggle to write success stories. Native digital journalism is on the rise, focusing on social, mobile and video. The likes of BuzzFeed, BleacherReport, Business Insider, Upworthy and Vice have extremely high valuations and gained remarkable traction in 2014 – with the Vice documentary about Islamic state maybe marking a point where traditional news outlets ultimately understood how serious the competition from these players can get. They work with a native digital newsroom and a native digital cost structure within a native digital business model, following a philosophy that digital publishing is as different from TV and Print as the two are different from each other. Image: https://news.vice.com/video/the-islamic-state-full-length 6
- 8. MOBILE AND SOCIAL MAY SERIOUSLY HURT SEARCH When we first observed signs for a mobile shift, and tried to think through what that meant, we came to the conclusion that search, esp. Google, would probably suffer. But that seemed too far fetched. In 2014, we saw first signs of such a develop- ment on a larger scale. Search still grows, but at the slowest rate in the last six years. Sites like BuzzFeed get 5 times the traffic from social compared to search (up from 3.5 times in February). Let‘s not start with “search is dead“ and all that, but in 2014 I learned that it is not unimaginable anymore that search may lose a lot of its significance. Image: http://epicpresence.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Mobile.jpg 7
- 9. ARTICLE PAGES ARE THE NEW STARS In May 2014, the New York Times Innovation report was leaked, and once Newspapers are dead, this will be a historical document. Among a million other interesting things, the report stated the decline of the share of homepage traffic. When you get your traffic more and more from social newsfeeds, timelines and from sharing among visitors, not only search suffers, but also direct traffic. Therefore, the homepage loses in significance, the navigation becomes less important, each article lives on its own and intelligent, contextual recommendations for what to consume next are the best way to keep someone in your destination. Publishers need to optimize article/player pages not only in appearance, but also for advertising. “Home- page takeovers“ won‘t be a premium product anymore. Report: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1160077-nyt-innovation-report- 2014.html#document/p3 8
- 10. THERE WON‘T BE A SECOND MYSPACE Every few months, someone predicts Facebook‘s death or Google‘s oncoming downfall. This may (although in 99% of the cases is not) come true with regards to the services that these brands stand for, but we should keep in mind that besides those, these companies are using their cash to build huge corporations that are very unlikely to be wiped off the landscape anytime soon. Wikipedia lists 34 acquisitions for Google in 2014 (of 173 in total), and that does not include their ventures program that focuses over one third of its money on health. Facebook and Apple both bought 8 companies, Microsoft 9, Twitter 4 and Yahoo! 18. And there‘s still a lot of cash left. Report: http://www.gv.com/2014/ 9
- 11. CHINA WILL BE THE CENTER OF THE WORLD We knew this one way earlier, but in September 2014, the biggest digital (and overall) IPO in the history of mankind came from China, raising 25 billion dollars. The times where Western companies (in this case Yahoo! with 9.5 billion) continue to participate in this success may soon be over – at least in the digital world. While we talk about Twitter and Snapchat, Tencent accumulates 824 million monthly active users, WeChat (Weixin in China) 468 million MAUs, both bigger than the two mentioned before combined. Image: http://fifthperson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Alibaba.jpg 10
- 12. Thank you Technology is our friend – www.papathanassiou.de