Online has heralded a golden age of new media over the past decade. But NO MORE. Online as a marketing term is now redundant with the advent of mobile. Why? Because a mobile device is also online, so to eradicate confusion - Online (as in accessing internet via PC or laptop) has been demoted to desktop.So, for the desktop artist formerly known as online, let's tidy up the terminology. Any internet enabled device that permits an application or site to use your location, is mobile and all other devices that are non-location specific are desktop.
Desktop is actually a horribly fudged phrase to describe how the majority of people still use the internet for entertainment which is via a laptop in front of the TV. I don't know about you, but the laptop pretty much follows me around the house so feels mobile enough for me.
The main issue here is convergence of technology which is forcing people and companies to think differently about what electronic products exist now and what may be adopted in the near future.
Take TV for example. I'm pretty sure within 12 months, we will need to come up with a new word for TV. The phrase Television will look wholly inadequate to describe Social Internet Video (SIV). SIV is the way everyone will consume TV media in the future. A few years on, it will impossible to think of how a football match could be watched at home without tweets and customised fan vision overlaying football action on the pitch. Or, how X-Factor (with or without Louie Walsh!), will take on a whole new dimension as you see people ranting at the acts from their living rooms via on-screen tweeting. Forget the phone line, imagine how instant SIV voting will decide results in real-time.
The only other factors holding back the tide of unstoppable consumer power and technology are political and economic barriers that protect the status-quo. The TV market in particular is a self-fulfilling oligopoly which finds it impossible to innovate whilst the internet can do nothing but swallow every other industry in it's path.
The future of TV, Radio, Internet & Books will look nothing like it does today. Let's just hope it's a fair fight which allows people to get information and entertainment faster and better than ever imagined before.
Lastly, in a case of art imitating life and then life imitating art.. be warned... Facebook TV is coming...
Check out the first signs here
