Today, branding can instantly be restructured based on a participant's contribution. Wether positive or negative, a brand can react to the sentiment. I realize that latency in correspondence and response times vary from brand to brand, but eventually (and I hope soon), brands will be operating their own portals. Social networks are obviously too rigid for brands to fully express there ideas, products or services. I've written about this a few times over the years. By nature of the advancement of the mobile space, people spend less time in front of the big screen and more time being mobile. That's the point of smart phones. Subsequently, we may find ourselves with passive media entertainment again, while everything we think about the entertainment or even how we react to it, will be sent to the cloud for aggregation and observation. Creepy. 'The more free software we use, the less free we are.'

Mobile technology is/has closed a small gap between the dichotomy of web users; Searcher and Escapist. In doing so, people do not spend as much time in front of their computers, unless they're working or specifically tending to a few critical tasks. In a sense, they're there to get something done–use the machine as a tool. This gap will be widened again when retail and experiential spaces re-merge as a more engaging way for brands to communicate their ideas and services. Technology will take its place by our waist side. Like most new things, once we've figured out the practicality of the new, we'll begin to reshape it to function more like ourselves versus dealing with the awkwardness of new. I'm not suggesting that the terminal (TV or Computer/Set top box) will lose its place in the home.

Another thing to consider regarding technology as it applies to branding is that the learning curve associated with previous generations, will be almost non-existent in the coming years. I do not mean to say people will not need to learn new things, but they will certainly be less resistant to the act of learning something new. In most cases, it is almost unnoticeable for most power users today. People will most certainly be comfortable typing a message, installing a new update, modifying some HTML themselves and generally just comfortable with new software and hardware upgrades. The learning curve associated with the challenges of the technology industry 20 years ago will seem archaic. People are trusting technology and hardware as it becomes a part of our daily lives. New systems or methods of communicating a message, idea, product or service will either be remarkably new, mundane and unnoticeable or discreet and automatic. And if this becomes true, security might be the new commodity after transparency.→

As the technology and marketing converge; we slowly go from observation, participation and reciprocation through a permissions-based system to an almost eerily automated anticipate and delivery mechanism. Which would then make most of these anticipate and deliver mechanisms destructive to the greater whole of innovation and collaboration.→

An example could be;
RunKeeper→ has been tracking my runs for a few months, maybe even years. Throughout my membership on the site, I've posted a few updates regarding purchases of new shoes. RunKeeper has figured out that, on average, I get a new pair of shoes every 3-5 months. Saucony→ has (hypothetically) been a partner or sponsor on RunKeeper. Saucony sees an opportunity to serve me an ad, link, email or in-window pop-in (some interactive mechanism) for a new pair of shoes.

Anticipate and deliver through aggregation of sentiment. It's very close.