Ideas for Technology in 2012
One of the perks of being a Web AddiCT is the privilege to work, and interact, with some of the leading thinkers and doers in various industries throughout the wwworld. As this blog has been covering technology that has an impact on the daily lives of (South) Africans and the rest of the web I asked some of the people within my social graph, who I believe will have an impact on the various tools and technologies you interact with daily sometimes forced but hopefully by choice. Herewith some 2012 trends as predicted by Joe Botha, Jon Cherry, Dave Duarte, Erik Hersman, Henk Kleynhans, Alan Knott-Craig Junior, Aslam Levy & Paul Scott. I asked 12 people for 1 sentence with an idea/prediction for 2012 and 8 of them replied. Herewith their thoughts for 2012…
Joe Botha – TrustFabric CEO
- More control over personal information and reputation.
- A focus on strong ties (real friends) – rather than weak ties (contacts).
Jon Cherry – co-founder & editor of Cherryflava.com
What’s going to be hot in 2012? Branded experiences – brand promotion that goes beyond a screen and sticky content. All the tools are now available to create branded experiences that closely resemble magic and seamlessly integrate that with popular social media platforms without the need for a digital device to share that experience on. Building an authentic, permission-based brand community is all in the design of the real-world experience.
Dave Duarte – MD of the Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy
More than 2 million people in SA will get their first smartphone in 2012, taking our total user-base to over 10 million. This will likely drive more broad-based use of the web and mobile apps for everything from job-hunting and banking to entertainment and socialization. As a result, early-adopter organizations will start replacing their traditional call-centers with text-based chat support for mobile users on WhatsApp, BBM and Mxit.
More than twice as much money will be spent on online and mobile advertising in South Africa, which will boost the incomes of online publishers and enable more success among digital entrepreneurs. As a result, we will also see more investment in the space, enabling yet more innovation.
Erik Hersman – Founder of Ushahidi & iHub
More African startups will find funding than ever before.
Henk Kleynhans – CEO of Skyrove Wifi Hotspots
In 2012, new “Super Wi-Fi” equipment equipment will become broadly available, allowing independent wireless ISPA and individuals to make use of prime, but underutilized TV white space spectrum for delivering high speed last mile broadband. This will likely be the most significant technology innovation of the decade, in terms of the economic impact it will unleash.
Alan Knott-Craig – CEO or MXit & World of Avatar
Advertising will become a secondary (and unnecessary) revenue stream for web businesses
Aslam Levy – Internet Portal Manager at the Western Cape Government
In the e-Government space we will see the eventual understanding and embracing of “Social, Mobile and Location”. The prioritization of these key theme’s will result in greater digital inclusion, especially for rural communities.
Paul Scott – Free Software hacker @ MIH SWAT
There is a lot of hype, but I think that the thing that is going to have the most impact will be bigdata and bigdata analysis. Not big as in petabytes, but big as in how to process it all quickly enough to be
meaningful.
Realtime analytics for predictive decision making in cities and medical will probably be the first iteration, but that will also be extrapolated quickly to other things too.
Mobile (android probably and WP) will make a lot of news. With new processors in devices (quad cores and GPU based processing) new apps will emerge that will allow folks to do much more on phones/tablets rather than desktop. Bandwidth will be an issue, but not as big an issue as power supplies (battery life).
I reckon that marketing will get more local and then hyperlocal. It will also be more targeted and intense. Spatial will (again) be a big player, but less so than the previous few years as the value add onto spatial will be more important than the spatial apps themselves. Basically, if I were to start a business this year, it would be with data processing and analytics for the masses.