OK, One More Time - It's Not About Technology

The rate of innovation within the web, and particularly web apps, is so extreme that it's easy to forget that - It's Not About Technology.  Almost every client conversation I have had recently has started with these words.  Nope. Networked media is all about people.  It's about people making connections with other people.  And people using those connections to pursue their passions and organise their lives in the way they'd like to.  Which often means, without annoying institutions getting in the way and demanding form-filling, standing orders, detailed personal information or references.  To focus (exclusively) on the technology completely misses the point.  It's the equivalent of the classic technologists' marketing error aka Features Not Uses.  But on a grand scale.  So be it the latest social net, widget, killer app, browser plug-in, pre-roll, data standard or video format.  They are only little bricks that are helping us to build a new social order composed of people-to-people connections - otherwise known as peer-to-peer or P2P.  And increasingly this is happening beyond the Silicon Valley Bubble and Geekdom.  The switched-on technologists know this and start with a mindset of, "I'll build a hammer and you show me what it's for".  But for many, technology is in itself beautiful and for others to give it a tweak is like scribbling some suggestions on a piece of art.  Clay Shirky sums this up wonderfully in his excellent new tome Here Comes Everbody: "Communication tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.  The invention of a tool doesn't create change: it has to have been round long enough that most of society is using it."  Shirky points out we're getting there and for younger generations, "our social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming."

Comments

[Mike Butcher]

Absolutely, and the techies and startups are now working in an application world, where the social nets are just the playground platforms to play in. They say: "The people are already here to play with their apps. So let's build."

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Mike. So as social nets become the norm and technology fades, the only apps that succeed are those that focus hard on people's needs - like Etsy. Wasn't it ever so?

[Eamon]

(Tradtional, creative) advertising will always play an important role because advertising is about making connections with people at a human level - entertainment: comedy, surrealism, interesting visuals and so on - because people always want to be entertained (but it has to be good, creative stuff).

We know that traditional, creative advertising does well on new media - just look at Cadbury's Gorilla.

Yes technology and gadgets are useful (and can be fun). But at the end of the day people want more than this. They, also, want to be entertained and make connections with other people.

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Eamon, I wouldn't disagree with the idea that people want to be entertained and make connections. The problem is that so little traditional creative advertising does that job. And even when it does - is anyone watching?