There are already more than a million different smartphone apps available for downloading for iOS, Android, Windows or Blackberry, and collectively these apps have now been downloaded about 50 billion times.
So whether you’re into games, stargazing, weight loss, or recipes, whether you need to look up TV schedules, credit card payments, a flight's status, or a movie's rating, if you can think of any subject area or routine task at all, chances are that something reasonably close to what you want has already been designed by some app developer somewhere (or by dozens of different app developers).
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Reasonably close doesn’t win the kewpie doll. In fact, the words “reasonably close” mean that it's not exactly right. And if you’re just an ordinary consumer with no background in writing code, and no real knowledge of how an API works (or even what an “API” really is), good luck trying to talk someone into customizing an app for your own personal benefit.
But in the very near-term future we're likely to see this begin to change. It is about to get immensely easier to get a computer – including your smartphone – to behave exactly the way you want it to, and to remember exactly how you like things to be arranged or done. I'm talking orders of magnitude simpler.
Natural-language programming isn’t quite available yet, although Stephen Wolfram’s just-announced Wolfram language is certainly very promising. Even before natural language programming, however, within the next year or so we should begin to see some app developers releasing meta-apps -- smartphone apps that connect easily with other smartphone apps, Web sites, and physical sensors, in order to coordinate their actions and provide a more convenient, customized experience for consumers. (EasilyDo is one example of an app that is approaching this capability, for instance, but I'm sure I'm overlooking many more, similar apps).
In the near future, when you start to pack for your next business trip you might be able to ensure that you automatically get an email or text message with the weather forecast for your destination, along with a current traffic report for the drive to the airport, because you yourself will have connected the calendar app, the trip planning app, and the weather app on your smartphone, along with a command to push the information to you at the appropriate time. Or perhaps the second (or third, or fourth) time you call up an individual stock price an app you designed yourself will automatically load it into the table of prices you regularly monitor. Or maybe when you check out a restaurant’s reviews, your app will do your social filtering by first calling up any reviews submitted by your friends, or by the friends of your friends, for your attention.
Consumers who can’t even do long division will soon be using algorithms to improve their shopping, in much the same way marketers use algorithms to improve their selling. So in addition to algorithms, watch for apps that you can design and install all by yourself, even if you know nothing about how to “code.”
Today, big marketing companies use servers, databases, automation, andpredictive analytics to sell more effectively to you. But as technology continues to hurtle into smaller and faster devices, you'll soon be able to use these same methods to manage your own life more effectively, including your buying decisions.
In addition to "one to one" marketing, start getting prepared for "bot to bot" marketing.
So whether you’re into games, stargazing, weight loss, or recipes, whether you need to look up TV schedules, credit card payments, a flight's status, or a movie's rating, if you can think of any subject area or routine task at all, chances are that something reasonably close to what you want has already been designed by some app developer somewhere (or by dozens of different app developers).
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Reasonably close doesn’t win the kewpie doll. In fact, the words “reasonably close” mean that it's not exactly right. And if you’re just an ordinary consumer with no background in writing code, and no real knowledge of how an API works (or even what an “API” really is), good luck trying to talk someone into customizing an app for your own personal benefit.
But in the very near-term future we're likely to see this begin to change. It is about to get immensely easier to get a computer – including your smartphone – to behave exactly the way you want it to, and to remember exactly how you like things to be arranged or done. I'm talking orders of magnitude simpler.
Natural-language programming isn’t quite available yet, although Stephen Wolfram’s just-announced Wolfram language is certainly very promising. Even before natural language programming, however, within the next year or so we should begin to see some app developers releasing meta-apps -- smartphone apps that connect easily with other smartphone apps, Web sites, and physical sensors, in order to coordinate their actions and provide a more convenient, customized experience for consumers. (EasilyDo is one example of an app that is approaching this capability, for instance, but I'm sure I'm overlooking many more, similar apps).
In the near future, when you start to pack for your next business trip you might be able to ensure that you automatically get an email or text message with the weather forecast for your destination, along with a current traffic report for the drive to the airport, because you yourself will have connected the calendar app, the trip planning app, and the weather app on your smartphone, along with a command to push the information to you at the appropriate time. Or perhaps the second (or third, or fourth) time you call up an individual stock price an app you designed yourself will automatically load it into the table of prices you regularly monitor. Or maybe when you check out a restaurant’s reviews, your app will do your social filtering by first calling up any reviews submitted by your friends, or by the friends of your friends, for your attention.
Consumers who can’t even do long division will soon be using algorithms to improve their shopping, in much the same way marketers use algorithms to improve their selling. So in addition to algorithms, watch for apps that you can design and install all by yourself, even if you know nothing about how to “code.”
Today, big marketing companies use servers, databases, automation, andpredictive analytics to sell more effectively to you. But as technology continues to hurtle into smaller and faster devices, you'll soon be able to use these same methods to manage your own life more effectively, including your buying decisions.
In addition to "one to one" marketing, start getting prepared for "bot to bot" marketing.
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