Social everything to being smart socially and Global Trends Report 2014 trends business leaders

When Moore’s Law was published, its model of exponential rates of change seemed unbelievable. Today it still guides the semiconductor sector. The accelerating global pace of change today is analogous to Moore’s law. Since the turn of the century, emerging markets have moved center stage, the digital revolution has arrived, social networks have become ubiquitous, a sharing economy has been born, scientific advances such as mapping the human genome have changed our lives, and the voice of the people has reinvented markets and overturned governments.

For organizations and individuals the opportunities and challenges that a Moore’s Law of change offers are vast. Look for continued radical changes in retail and social networks and value chains being reconfigured as connectivity and technology redistribute industry. “Hubonomics” will shift how and where we operate and consume. The latest scientific advances will make the impossible, possible. Perhaps the biggest issue looking forward will be to understand and manage the contradictions these changes entail.

1.     From social everything to being smart socially

Social technologies are everywhere, but these vast repositories of digital “stuff” bury the exceptional among the unimportant. It’s time to get socially smart. Users are moving to niche networks to bring back the community feel and intelligence to social interactions. Businesses need to get smarter about extracting and delivering value from big data including challenging business models. For social networks, mobile is the great leveler. Competition for attention with other apps will intensify the battle to own key assets from identity to news sharing, demanding radical reinvention.        

The rise of niche networking: The world of social networking may be crowded but it does not deter new entrants. With significant interest in networks such as Google+ and Pinterest it became obvious that the consumers wanted something different, more specific, and focused from social networks – and plenty of new players are trying to provide it. One is SumZero, the world’s largest community of investment professionals from hedge funds, mutual funds, and private equity funds. Here more than 9,000 pre-screened professionals collaborate on a fully transparent platform. Another is Potluck, also known as “house party on the Internet,” designed for people wanting to “talk about cool things your friends find on the internet and hang out with people they know”. Other emerging niche networks include Quora, Quibb, Path, Best of All Worlds, Doximity and GovLoop. (Source: Fast Company)

Are companies being socially smart? Social networks are not just the place to connect for individuals. They are increasingly places for businesses to interact with customers. 87% of Fortune 100 companies now have a presence on at least one social media website, with Twitter the most popular, while over 80% of SMEs planned to increase their use of social media in 2013. Despite this business social presence, not all are listening. Firms respond, on average, to only 30% of feedback from social media websites; 56% of customer tweets are ignored; 39% of companies don’t track social response at all; and less than 20% of U.S companies have integrated social media with their customer service, sales or product development processes. How socially smart is your company? (Source: All Twitter)

What’s next after Facebook: 1+ billion users and counting. Facebook is still growing but warned earlier this year that it might be losing “younger users” to “other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.”Speculation is that if Facebook doesn’t reinvent itself, like other tech leaders such as Apple, Google and Yahoo, the heydays could be over sooner rather than later. Takeovers of Instagram and Onava suggest that Facebook may using acquisitions to “force back” users’ attention but it is an expensive and difficult strategy. Snapchat, the photo-messaging app, now boasts 350 million photo uploads daily, the same number as Facebook. WhatsApp, the messaging service with 300 million users, has been able to collect paid download and annual subscription revenue. In the tech industry “no change – no customer” is the rule. Will Facebook be able to keep up with startups likeSnapchat and WhatsApp?  (Source: BuzzFeed FWD, The Guardian,Business Insider)

Embracing big data: The big data buzz has been around for a while but many organizations still don’t know how to tap into the tremendous amount of useful data that they collect. A survey sponsored by SAP indicates that 43% of organizations have some type of formal “big data” initiative going on, with most 1000+ employee firms engaged in “big data” initiatives. One is GE who has used big data to make smarter turbines. Another example is Wichita State University's (WSU) which uses it (as do many U.S. educational institutions) to optimize offerings and steer help to students who need it. Cities worldwide are also using big data to control traffic, parking opportunities, and energy consumption. (Source: Gigaom, Fast Company, Mashable). As everything and everyone gets more connected expect to see more big data projects coming your way – as a recent Bain study shows, those early adopters that have found the potential of big data are out performing competitors by a wide margin.