From ‘An Internet of People’
Over the past few years, a bunch of web-based marketplaces have gotten popular – Etsy, Kickstarter, AirBnb, to name a few. Many of these business ideas had been tried before but are succeeding only now.
When a trend like this emerges, it’s always interesting to ask “why now?” For example, for almost a decade, entrepreneurs tried to create video sharing services like YouTube, but only succeeded when certain key dependencies – broadband, digital video cameras, a version of Flash that “just worked” – became widespread.
I asked Roelof Botha the “why now” question regarding web-based marketplaces. He said something I thought was really interesting: marketplaces depend on trust, and trust requires knowing the reputation of a prospective counterparty. Today, for the first time, you can get background information on almost any prospective counterparty by searching Google, Facebook etc. Or put more simply: we finally have an internet of people.By Chris Dixon
So much more of what designers are designing and producers are producing, and what we consumers are consuming, is inherently connected. Virtually everything has an element of social connectivity to it, and we willingly put more and more of ourselves out into the ether—from the obvious and innocuous pictures of our cats on Facebook, to the less intuitive list of our credit card purchases on Blippy. What we are opting in and out of is no longer simply about trying the newest product on the market; it is about deciding whether or not to be part of society.
The ironic fate that extinguishes so many trends built on suggesting and exploiting authenticity is that their very popularity extinguishes that which made them popular.
There is a notion that not being connected means you are bored. Not being bored means you are connected.
As much as everything ‘digital’ has affected our world, the point is we are in a social revolution not a technological one
The truth about trends? The future is as baffling, beautifully unpredictable and compelling as a new baby arriving in a settled family. Of course we look forward to this arrival. But proper response to the topic of trends is perhaps using it as a way to see past the tyranny of past habits of thoughts, and inculcate a fresh way of looking at the present?
