Gamification
Was already a big hype in 2012 but will go even bigger in 2013 cause people think they can sell their crappy services much better when they try to “motivate” their users with badges or other game like mechanism. Just ask yourself: What was the most addictive game you ever played: Probably Tetris or Super Mario or one of the Call of Duty games? Do you see any badges or competition in these games? No – because their basic mechanism was the factor that makes the game addictive. The cool story or just the way you put bricks together was the key. When we add gamification to any other existing service or tool we want to give extra motivation to the users. Good point, but why not fixing the main issue in making a service useful, fun to use that you don’t need this “tricks”? You see gamifacation mechanisms in Google, amazon, facebook, Dropbox, etc? No, because the services are working as they are built. Foursquare may be the most popular example where you can earn badges. But is this the main reason to check in at a specific place? No, the main motivation is the narcissism to show off to your friends at which cool places you have been – no badges or rankings needed here.
Big data
Since big companies invented data warehouses or business intelligence they are collection huge amounts of data. Nothing really new, this happens since the 90s. But now someone asks “Hu, we collected lots of data during all the years, what do with this stuff?”. This is where big data and big data analysis comes into the game. We collected all this data over the years and now we realize “ups, we can’t process this huge amount of data with our current techniques”. But why now? Why this analysis have not evolved parallel to collecting the data? I can’t give an answer for that cause it is absurd for me to collect something that i can’t use in a valuable way. Big data is the excuse for something that should have happened all over the time we collected data.
Browser Games
Very popular last year and seeing a large amount of investments. Things changed dramatically in this field and also the market is going towards a consolidation. Big industry players like Bigpoint and Zynga are shrinking down their game portfolio to drop operating costs. 2013 we’ll see the peak of online browser gaming and from this point on a constant decrease in players and revenues. Also in-game purchases and virtual-goods-trading will decrease. Players become bored of building farms and moving towards serious games with attractive multiplayer functions.
Social TV
Social TV is another movement trying to make more out of TV as it actually is: a lean-back entertainment box in your living room. It might be true that there is a lot of social media buzz related to TV shows and series going on. But this buzz is good as it works and need not to be bundled and put into a social tv app. Also the potential is 1:1 related to the content. Means, no engaging content no social (tv) activity. As a mater of fact there is only little tv content that have this potential: casting shows, ongoing tv series, quiz shows, etc. The main problem is that TV is not social. Social Media is social and these are just TV Inputs generated into that channels. This trend will no mather in 2013 because no TV station will get the problem solved to make TV more social – because it is not solvable (at the moment).
iPad magazines
Digital magazines, mostly for iPads, were one of the biggest promises for the struggling print industry. With the closing down of Rupert Murdoch’s “The Daily” we have the prove that it can’t be turned in to a success story even with huge resources and money spendings. Digital magazines are far away from being a mainstream product but exactly this is a requirement to turn them via reach into money. The main issue is probably that reader devices will need sufficient more years to be spread in the market and also user experience must be improved significant. And the most important point is, that digital newspapers or magazines are not the solution to save the struggling print industry. It’s maybe a way of media consumption we will experience in 10 or something years but at the moment printed and online/web are the most common consumption ways. Here are the issues that must be solved.
Mobile
Since I could imagine every year there was a prediction that 20xx will be the year of mobile. And guess what, it wasn’t until now. And guess again, 2013 will also not be the year of mobile. Why? Because we are in the middle of a constant evolution moving towards a past PC area where mobile devices are the majority of “computers”. All other related buzz words like “mobile first” or even “mobile marketing” go along with this steady development but there will be no year of mobile at all.