Perhaps it feels like it is already happening, but technology is slowly but surely taking over our lives.
Did you know that more than 90% of smart phone users have their phone within arms reach 24 hours a day? Talk about problems with intimacy, we sleep with our cell phones closer than our mates. Now that may have something to do with relationships strains?
All kidding aside, we do pretty much live on our devices. In a typical day we go from cell phone to ipad to desktop and usually back to one mobile device or another as we consume and communicate around the clock.
Social Media Bug Hits Just About Everyone
At this point in time, there are well over a billion people using social media every day. Whether your channel of choice is Facebook, Twitter or business network LinkedIn, many of us our visiting one or more of these networks each day.
For the longest time these channels were ways that we could share text updates. Soon thereafter text updates became text and links, and then it became text, links and embedded graphics. Essentially moving from just reading to a full multimedia experience. This trend is continuing up the technology food chain as once again we are seeing motion that is taking us beyond just text and pictures and now toward a more immersive experience.
In recent months we have seen a surge in popularity of video on social platforms. First there were video sharing networks like YouTube and since then we have seen the emergence of apps like Vine where short videos are the highlight of the platform. Since then Facebook has started tinkering with video in our streams and they are also developing a video based ad platform so now we can be even more annoyed by the amount of advertisements cluttering our stream.
What I don’t see is the emergence of video going away and the desire for people who are connecting on social platforms to become lower tech. Begging the question, is there an opportunity for Social Media and Video to collide at an enterprise level?
Where We Are Today With Social Video Communication
Today we are already seeing Facebook, Skype and Google all offer consumer type video solutions that can be launched via social networks.
Perhaps the evolution is being led by platforms like Google Plus who recently announced in partnership with HP the launch of a room based video solution that will leverage the Google platform.
The idea of being able to within a couple of clicks from a social exchange launch a face-to-face communication with a potential client or supplier has to at the very least be wetting the appetites of other business video leaders like Polycom, Cisco and Lifesize?
What Could Video Look Like If Social and Business Video Collide?
Can you imagine what our online experience could look like if we could from any social network with just a few clicks launch a secure video call on a private enterprise network?
Today this is the limitation as all of the embedded video solutions are run over public cloud and they are basically property of the platform.
To translate to enterprise “Acceptable” the ideal platform would have to allow for users to exit the public cloud hosted by these various social platforms and launch somewhere private to secure the communication. This is probably the biggest hurdle.
Having said that, the possibilities of a technology world where a tool like Jabber or Webex can become ubiquitous with a Facebook company page or a Twitter stream create some unprecedented marketing and customer service opportunities that are out of this world.
If and when the various technology platforms get on board with something like this is to be seen, but there is no question we are heading in that direction.
Social Business Video is still a mere idea or perhaps better described, a dream, but in the future our communication experience, voice, video and messaging will collide with social. The only question is who will get there first and will the players we expect be the ones to lead the charge?
Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.