Sylleptic

A few weeks ago I posted something about the news that web 3.0 is apparently just around the corner, and wrapped up with a comment that as it’s 2006 I thought I ought to have my jet-pack by now. I guess they’ve been held back because of their environmental impact, which is a shame because my flight into the office would be beautiful most days.

Anyway, what this all leads up to is that there’s been a lot of talk at the shop about what the next big things will be, where our industry and media consumption will be in 5 years time, and how we should make the most of that. I thought I’d write something to try to get a discussion going about what we see as the really important trends. Here are some starters:

- A lot more video on the web, free and commercial
- Loads more bandwidth everywhere
- A lot more interactivity on TVs: Intel Viiv (basically a PC in every TV set) is coming, so is BT Vision

- A lot more video on demand everywhere
- Flash video, allowing us to easily combine interactivity with rich video content
- Less and less people watching commercial television, with ad revenue for ITV (the main UK commercial channel) falling away month after month

What does this make me think? The obvious one is that TVs and PCs will quickly become the same things. I don’t know if it will matter whether it’s a Mac Mini, an Intel Viiv / Windows Media Centre or something altogether new, perhaps an open source Linux box like these Neuros boxes.

My next guess is that all that on demand will become the norm for most TV consumption. It’s crazy that we all have 80 gig hard drives at home in our PVR / Sky+ / Tivo boxes when we could download anything any time, if the networks figured it out. The time in the TV schedule would become the release date / time and we could watch anything we wanted, whenever we wanted. BT Vision has some of that functionality already.

The next important thing then will be search. So much content. Some of it personal, user created, home movies, web-cams… Some of it current TV, movies etc. But every episode of CSI (all 3 strands) ever made. All 7 seasons of Star Trek TNG. We’re going to need lots of search, and lots of recommendation. The set top box will need phenonemal search capabilities, and all that content will have to be tagged and indexed.

Finally, for now, rights management is going to get tricky. It’s already confusing. You can buy a movie online for your PC and PSP, and have the DVD mailed to you. You can rent an episode for 7 days, or buy a season pass for a year, during which time you can view each episode for 2 weeks. THIS IS TOO CONFUSING. All the different players and DRM systems will make it complex too. Something needs to be done here if the user experience and the revenue opportunity are to be maximised.

And what does this all mean for companies like Agency.com? We have to gear up to be great at rich, engaging interactivity across all digital channels, across the whole customer lifecycle. We’re well on the way, of course, but there’s plenty still to be done.