How Will The Real-Time Web Deliver New Value?

PLUGGED IN REAL-TIME WEB ROUNDTABLE – FOLLOW UP THOUGHTS

1. Real-Time Value: Amid a proliferation of online information, publishers such as the Wall Street Journal operate two-tier business models that prompt customers to pay for premium content.

-->Comment: We find that both businesses and consumers value the immediate access to creative and unique content. Live information, such as mobile location and real-time analytics, will provide dynamic insights on customer behaviors, enable a swifter online business flow, and optimize marketing.

2. Electronic Content: Companies monetize real-time data by delivering electronic transactions with intangible, time-sensitive items such as stock trading, and travel and entertainment reservations.

--> Comment: Faster, smarter, and increasingly viral online multimedia content will converge with broadcast media, entertainment, fashion, music, movies, and games. Creative services will monetize real-time data such as location and time-sensitive pricing, yield management, and online prestige.

3. Social Media: As humans are inherently social, a properly managed identity and online presence will help in building relationships. Real-time habits (e.g., to mingle and share) will modify social interactions.

--> Comment: The power to engage people in personal, as well as many-to-many online interactions, will drive cultural changes. As individuals opt in to share personal information, we believe that flat (one-to-many) electronic delivery models will give way to more participative and pervasive social dynamics.

4. Adoption: Changes to purchasing interactions entail massive learning curves. Promoting online services will require market segmentation that attends adequately to lifestyles and behaviors.

--> Comment: Brands and advertising agencies should mind evolving online behaviors and shifting loyalty patterns. To capitalize on the accelerated, take up of online commerce and viral growth of emerging niche markets, companies should also direct marketing resources to focused offerings.

5. Interaction: Opposite the mere automation of “back end” processes, real-time interactions will integrate live media such as voice and video, and presence information (e.g., mobile location).

--> Comment: Real-time media will gradually transform social interactions. We believe that innovations in location-based content, context-sensitive information, and recognition of verbal and non-verbal cues will enrich broadcast and online channels and open new business as well as lifestyle dimensions.