The trend toward increased convergence of our social media sites, home entertainment devices and your company intranet is going to change the way you communicate to the world in the next few years. People’s identities will be embedded in our televisions, music and video devices and the like, thanks to enhanced location awareness.
It’s been coming for years, and now a new spurt of cutting edge web and mobile technologies will shake things up even sooner than you might think.
From my perspective, this convergence trend is already changing the way corporations view channels like Facebook and Twitter. In the next few years I think you’ll see more companies embracing open innovation through social media channels, allowing people to collaborate seamlessly and share interests in a a multi-channel environment.
As online sharing becomes embedded into everthing we do, we’ll need to decide individually how quickly we need to adapt our TVs, music systems, cars and computers to keep on top of the trend. Imagine your TV remote control not only being touch screen, but including “like” and “tweet” buttons which autopost to your Facebook page.
And if cell phone identity-location postings make you nervous about people being able to find you, get ready for even more devices empowered by embeddable RFID tags. I’ve heard that some companies are working on smart handbags, which would enable auto-checkins and send coupons to your phone as you enter your favorite store!
Are you ready for the future? Or is all this sharing making you apprehensive?