Three Social Thunderstorms George Colony Forrester Research

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XZNsBz0aGw]

Forrester's CEO, George Colony outlined three social "thunderstorms" at LeWeb (2011) approaching the tech & business world. Watch the video before reading the comments :)

Thunderstorm 1:  The Death of the Web
The application economy has the potential to tap both processing power and the cloud to change the Web. This will be a move away from a client/server model to something more cleaver…

Things to think about from me as I am not sure it is this simple…

I agree with the move away from Client/Server for some apps services, however there are a number of balances

1.  user experience vs security – this is always a balance and depends on more than where the processing power is

2.  scale vs fragmentation – control does offer a few things, think…Apple iOS vs Google Andriod

3.  access speed vs cost – not everyone can afford everything

4.  data vs rights – stop pushing data and just send links and seek the rights

5.  realtime vs now – realtime has demands that are very different to now….

6.  privacy vs control – the more you control the more privacy you may believe you have.


Thunderstorm 2:  Social Saturation
We are only blessed with 24 hours in a day and social needs create value to cut out some real time based on effectiveness or efficiency gains.

Things to think about from me – totally agree however…

  1. experts are clueless on what is of value
  2. customer cannot tell you what they need therefore go create and discover
  3. jump to the next curve – but not sure where it is as yet
  4. you need data to learn ( if you are not a player you cannot play)


Thunderstorm 3: The Enterprise
Enterprises like social technologies as it provides a link to their customers

Things to think about from me however…

  1. capture data ( enterprise is good at both internal and external)
  2. Store data (expert in this at all levels)
  3. Analyse data (value and wealth creating focus)
  4. Create the feedback loop to exploit more data capture and value from analysis – big problem area and one that boards cannot get their heads round……