First RSS, then Podcasts…So, What’s Next?

Developers/inventors are pioneers of the latest and greatest technology apps. Trend-setting consumers make it spread like wildfire. Businesses ultimately find a way to evolve and monetize new technologies. This is my opinion of what we have seen historically and will continue to see moving forward. Which brings us to today. RSS feeds exploded this year, follow by its Irish twin (within a 12-month period) Podcasts. So, today is November 23, 2005, and I’ve been thinking about what comes next.



Here are my predictions, based on the premises that (1) the recent shift of media/communications control back to consumers/customers is permanent and only in its infancy, and (2) that professionals like so many that I know in Fortune 500 companies - investment banks, marketing, and a multitude of other businesses, currently use a minor amount of company-sponsored resources and a major amount of personal/consumer apps to peform their jobs:

1. Consumer versions of social networking and personalized content will make its way into the business side. Social networking in the business sector will be birthed in a different way than the acquaintance/6-degrees-of-separation networking versions of existing tools such as LinkedIn.com, the very focused collaborative tool sets that may exist within any niche industries, or the traditional databases, search solutions, or the linear supply chain management solutions that exist for research reports and other types of content.

2. These versions will appear in two major forms: (i) for B2B prospects who are buyers, administrators, decision makers, or influencers within an organization; or (ii) for end users within an organization.

3. For the buyer/administrator segments, vendor management consoles will appear where RSS feeds and Podcasts for all vendors related information/updates/reports, industry media, and other items will be populated, possibly within intranets or other secure online locations. It will a place where administrators and department managers will be able to perch themselves for easy relationship management and customized content views. Similar channel partnership consoles will also appear. So, instead of the big tech companies like Oracle having a partner network that you go to OR an advertising or PR firm having a client intranet to go to, there will be a shift from vendor-centric to client/organization-centric, where their custom information can be pulled rather than pushed.

4. End users consoles will also appear for professionals within organizations, enabling users to have business-like versions of social networking and custom content portals like Yahoo360 (http://360.yahoo.com), Google, Orkut, MSN, AOL, and some other small fish. It will be like an enterprise electronic laboratory notebooks are for scientists, enabling them to access, personalize, publish (peer to peer/P2P and also publicly) and disseminate, and manage information. They will have tie-ins into business versions of instant messenger and other communications apps and enterprise versions of enterprise social software/project management tools (e.g. SocialText.com). With the flexibility to integrate with internal information, tools, and resources, and there will be one heck of powerful engine for professionals and businesses. An adoption struggle could threaten this wherein businesses will want this type of infrastructure set-up under their umbrella and professionals will want an infrastructure that is portable to go wherever they go, which often means bouncing around the same industry for 20 years.


To summarize:

RSS feeds and podcasts have been the hottest technologies lately. Individuals pushed the envelope with businesses quickly jumping into the fray after picking up on their potential business/customer impact. There will undoubtedly be other individual killer apps that come out, but the next evolutionary step will be to have something that ties these together and in a way that conforms to the seismic shift towards the individual, whether consumer, business decision maker, or the working professional. The impact will greatest in small to medium organizations - particularly start-ups, and working professionals who are business managers at early- to mid-career level positions.