The past five years have brought vast changes to the world of media and communication. In that time, we’ve moved from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets, we’ve abandoned most software for smarter, faster apps, and even your mom has joined Facebook. We now receive and process information much differently than we did just a few short years ago. In the next few years to come, we can certainly expect just as many rapid advancements -- if not more. Of course, no one knows for sure what the future will bring, but based on trends of today, we can expect that, in the next five years, personalization will play a key part in the world of media.
Facebook started a ground-breaking trend a couple of years ago when it began allowing companies to post advertisements on your wall. Yes, these ads are incredibly annoying, but the breakthrough is the ability to target a potential customer based on the likes and interests of that person’s friends. If your friends like a particular product, you are more likely to take notice and try it yourself. Using this same idea, Google will be jumping on the bandwagon in the near future. The world’s largest search engine will be modifying it’s search results to display results that are specific to you by matching your search history, personal profile (on Google+), and the search history and interests of people in your circle. This trend is known as Social Searching. Some articles even suggest that Facebook will offer it’s own search engine, possibly competing with Google in the fight for where we get our information.
But Google and Facebook aren’t the only companies who are tracking what you do online -- everyone is, and the companies who aren’t yet, will be in the next 5 years. Website trends will be able to tell if you are a first-time visitor or a frequent visitor. They’ll be able to tell if you got to their site from a Google search, from an ad on Facebook, or from a bookmarked URL. They’ll know if you bought anything from the the last time you visited and how much you spent. By tracking all of this information, companies will be able to modify their website on the fly, displaying a website that is unique to you and offer suggestions for your next purchase. While this isn’t new technology, the accessibility of this technology to smaller mom-and-pop businesses will change the face of the web in the next 5 years.
Then, personalization will go beyond the internet and make its way into the real world. By getting to know you on a personal level, and then following you while you use your smartphone, businesses will know when you’re approaching their store and reach out to personally invite you in with a special deal that you can’t resist. Let’s say you’ve just wandered into your favorite electronics store and have your smartphone in-hand. Your phone will be able to search the store’s inventory and make recommendations for that new game or gadget based on your interests and purchasing history. Next, you could send a request to a salesperson who could bring that item right to you, answer any questions, and pay for the item right from your phone without having to stand in the check-out line.
The news media will benefit from advancements in social sharing, too. Instead of surfing through TV channels to find the network that offers news you’re interested in, we’ll soon have social TV, which will automatically customize what we want to see based on what’s trending with our friends on Facebook or G+. We’ll also be able to interact with the news by syncing twitter feeds to the news networks, who will respond to what we’ve posted.
The future is coming fast, and like it or not, the world of social media will find out who you are and what you’ll buy. There’s no use hiding from it, but what we may lose in privacy, we’ll make up for in personalization.
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