For those who do not know, Altimeter Group was acquired by Prophet, a brand strategy consultancy, in July 2015. The partnership doesn’t change Altimeter’s agenda. In fact, our research will only expand and scale. Recently Prophet hosted an event to discuss trends in customer experience and digital transformation. It was held in Minneapolis with some of the top local companies in attendance. Co-presenting with me was Chris Finlay, Director of Experience Design and Product Innovation UnitedHealth Group, and author of…
Introducing N3TWORK, A Mobile Television Network Powered by Interests and Context
Early on, I was one of the first analysts to explore the dynamics of the interest graph versus the social graph in social networks. Think Twitter vs. Facebook. I learned right away that interest graphs tend to share connections based on topics rather than relationships. I also found that every person possesses a series of 6-10 interest graphs that together form a social graph. Google refers to these groupings as “Circles.” The notion of manually organizing people by interests though…
A New Era for Search: The Zero Moment of Truth is Now Defined by Shared Customer Experiences
This is the story of when ZMOT met UMOT… Search is a natural step in the discovery process. In a web world, search engines offer a lens into a qualified and structured view to help online consumers focus and make informed decisions. With Google dominating search, marketers concentrated on improving search ranking through tried and true techniques to ensure that what they were marketing earned a coveted position in the likely search results a customer might consider clicking. Search is…
Facebook Evolves from Social Network to Social Ecosystem
Every so often, Facebook hosts its f8, a conference in San Francisco aimed at developers, media, and partners. This year, in front of an audience of 2,500+, Facebook introduced its vision for the next year and beyond. With Mark Zuckerberg kicking things off, Facebook introduced a dozen or so new products organized into three including Facebook’s update to Login, which gives people more control over the information they share with apps, Anonymous login, which offers a way for people to…
Stop Talking About Technology and Start Designing Experiences
As Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore wrote in the Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, the future of business is less about products and more about creating experiences. That’s right. You’re no longer in the product business. Products are a by-product of experiences you set out to create. Products are also social objects that spark desirable relationships between you and customers and also among customers. The future of business is experiences. One year after launching What’s…
The Ultimate Moment of Truth and The Art of Digital Engagement
In 2012, Google along with Jim Lecinski published a fantastic book that explored how digital customers made decisions in what Google refers to as “The Zero Moment of Truth.” The ZMOT as it’s abbreviated, helps strategists discover relevant strategies and tactics on how to show up at the right place, at the right time and with the right content in a digital ecosystem. In a world where consumers “Google it” to begin their digital journey, ZMOT revealed that brands need…
New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake
Elements of inspiration that went on to become my new book, What’s the Future of Business, Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences Blame it on the youth they say. Indeed, there’s a great assumption that the future of technology falls in the hands of emergent generations. The youth of today will someday represent the majority of consumers, employees and citizens. That’s always the case, but what we don’t yet fully appreciate is just how different young adults think today. We…
From the Big Screen to the Little Screen: The evolving relationship between TV and search
As a digital analyst, it’s my job to study how technology disrupts business markets and models. As an aspiring social scientist, I also study technology’s impact on culture and behavior. These two worlds are colliding with increasing velocity as each day passes. One of the trends I’ve been following over the last several years is the relationship between TV, smartphones, tablets and PCs. There’s no longer a doubt that we are becoming a society of multiscreeners. The reality is that…
We are now a society of multi-taskers and multi-screeners
We are a nation of multi-taskers. As you read this, you’re either doing something else, or this is the “something else” you’re doing while your work on other projects or relax in front of another device. Not only are we multi-taskers, we’re also multi-screeners. Whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, PC/laptop, TV or something other device, we’re consuming, creating, and curating content across multiple devices, often at the same time. It seems that we’re rewiring our brains simply by how we…
Social Media as the Next Web
Source: GapingVoid “The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge.” – Tim Berners-Lee, Web inventor, founder, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), source For years now, we’ve talked about the evolution of Web 2.0 and an era of a more open and social web. Certainly the web has become social. As to whether or not it’s more open, well that’s for a later discussion. With our time together now, I’d like to explore the…
