The Future of the Web Waking up in the developing world. May 7th, 2008 E-mail to a friend
In the children's book "If the World Were a Village,"
David Smith suggests we imagine the world as a village of 100 people.
This construct is helpful when we consider the role of the web, social
networks and mobile technology as they relate to the Awakening Consumer
and the future. There are approximately 49 million Awakening Consumers
in the U.S. alone—that's almost 1 citizen out of the village of 100.
78%
of the Awakening Consumers in the U.S. have access to high speed
internet, and out of that 78%, it is quite likely that a good
percentage of them are bloggers.
The role of bloggers as
influencers in the marketplace has been noted by many. As the internet
continues to be the bedrock of future communications and activism,
observing how bloggers are writing about environmental matters, green
products, and green initiatives gives us a glimpse into the mind of the
Awakening Consumer and who influences them. This is because blogs offer
a platform for interactivity and two-way communication as opposed to
other traditional media, which are unidirectional in nature. So the
question becomes, are you communicating with the Awakening Consumers of
today and tomorrow?
Tomorrow's Awakening Consumers are from the developing world, and they are quickly joining the netizenry. Consider this map of digital inclusion, that shows global access to the internet, and pay close attention to the spotlights.
Web
2.0 technologies are increasingly the norm in modern life, and the
power of social networks in self-organization and word-of-mouth product
recommendations continues to be acknowledged by marketers.
Global
Voices Online (GV) curates, aggregates and amplifies the conversations
by citizen journalists around the world, often covering events and
localized perspective of the world that is not covered by the
mainstream media. Global statistics on how many bloggers are coming
online are difficult to come by, but as part of GV-Environment, we have
seen bloggers around the world writing about the environment in their
locales, about climate change and even green products that they consume
or produce. Believe it or not, there are Awakening Consumers in
Sub-Saharan Africa—in Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya and particularly in
South Africa. As connectivity increases, there are bound to be even
more consumers coming online. Ethical Co-Op,
in South Africa, illustrates something interesting, whereby you have
producers of green products using the web to write about the green
lifestyle, organize events and even answer questions from their
customers. This shows that the web is currently being used to reach the
global Awakening Consumer, and that this segment could emerge strongly
in the future.
When talking about the developing world,
particularly Africa, the role of mobile phones cannot be
underestimated. According to the EPROM Project at MIT,
there are approximately 1.4 billion mobile phone users in the
developing world, and in the continent of Africa, mobile phone use has
increased 65 percent per year. This is twice the global
average. These statistics are instructive, as mobile phones have had a
transformative effect in Africa, and will continue to be the platform
for communication. The future of Africa and the developing world
centers around the mobile phone. The mobile phone could be the platform
on which the global Awakening Consumer interacts with the world and, in
effect, with marketers. Companies that leverage this ubiquitous but
important tool could position themselves at the ear of an untapped
market. How can this be achieved? The mobile landscape is growing fast,
and the answer to that question may not be clear at this time; but we
can take a cue from an innovative and experimental initiative by Ken
Banks, the founder of Kiwanja.net and Frontline SMS. Banks has developed a free downloadable game called Silverbackers.
This mobile phone game educates the player about gorilla conservation,
and invites the player to join and support the cause. The initiative
uses the mobile phone as a platform for learning; in the future this
same platform could be used for marketing.
A recent BBC article explained ”Why the future is in your hands,”
with Nigel Clifford of Symbian quoted as saying "The future of the
internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or
at the office; it's going to be mobile." To reach the Awakening
Consumer in the future, figure out what games they will be playing, and
what applications they will be using on their phone tomorrow.
