Security and Authenticity will be the new commodity
The Web/Cloud is posed to resolve and de-throne the hucksters within this area of expertise. And Google has a few things brewing that could be really great for all of us, or really bad. On the other hand, as mobile content and desktop-client software ( or Saas ) continually provide opt-in features where users provide validated and quantifiable data about themselves, we may see extremely concise targeting with messaging and communication. Eventually leading to the end of any/all forms of disruptive or intrusive advertising. Interactive will survive, but I believe the definition of the word needs redefining.

The technology that supports these mediums is not as ubiquitous as some would have everyone believe. This is not to say that everyone doesn't have access to the hardware that drives it but, rather understanding the software that controls it.

Social marketing works because the message has moved from mouth-to-mouth, beyond the communications effort. It's either become a cultural element for some or a sad joke for others. And if this data isn't protected properly, or for some reason it is breached under the umbrella of a major brand, the medium will die all-together.



*Insert Announcer Voice*
Reputation Protectors! We'll encrypt your entire life. And sell you back your password, if you forget! (let's hope we don't allow this to happen)

Device independence
Mobile technology is/has closed a tiny 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. You know, because we actually need to see, hear, touch, feel, and express ourselves in the tangible world. 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(s) (TV or Computer/Set top box/device X) will lose its place in the home, I'm suggesting it's relegated to a passive experience again. Aging demographics, essentially a maturing person, will alter this a little. It's an X-Factor in my opinion.

Brands will have true portals, but they'll be accessed no differently than one changes the channel on their television now
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. 'The more free software we use, the less free we are.' Creepy.

Anticipate and deliver through aggregation of sentiment
As 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. Which then creates the need for:

Value Centers
We've unsuccessfully moved from being noise junkies to noise producers. We need creative value centers. We are coming dangerously close to losing our ability to provide well-thought-out ideas. Let alone, long-term memory retention of the things we've created. Their respective failures and successes are instantly magnified and then consequently reduced to nothing, tossed out, and overwritten. As a rapid-prototyping creative democracy approaches, we forget before we've learned. The most precious of commodities; exchanging, implementation, advancement of ideas through fair and ubiquitous streams of information, can potentially hurt us without a creative value center of some sort... And as the micro-centralized thought/idea people collect, where or how, do we continue to provide unlimited access and information through a synchronized operating system (the internet) without charging people and creating the same depreciated socio-economical walls that exist offline now?

The You; We; Me and I in social media will eventually lead to what it has always led to–Us.