We Are Social: Think Forward 2016

Think forward >
Introduction
Mobbie Nazir - Chief Strategy Officer

“No one can see into the future. What I try to do is outline possible "futures" - although
totally expected inventions or events can render predictions absurd after only a few years.
The classic example is the statement, made in the late 1940s, by the then chairman of IBM
that the world market for computers was five. I have more than that in my own office.”
Arthur C Clarke

Think forward >
Predicting the future is a fascinating topic. It is a
dream as old as history, from consulting the
Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece to the work
of Nostradamus in Medieval France. This
fascination has persisted into modern history
which is littered with visions of the 21st century
that never came true - but that doesn’t stop
people and organisations from trying to see
what is around the next corner. Today, we
make forecasts all the time - from predicting
traffic flows to the demand for turkeys at
Christmas.

By now it is widely recognised that
social media is changing our world. It’s
one of the biggest shifts in culture and
society since the industrial revolution
and it is only just getting started.
Research methodologies and
predictions of future events are not
the only traditional business models
that social media has turned on its
head.
Traditionally, these predictions have been based
on what people have already done - but now with
the wealth of real-time data available at our
fingertips, we are starting to see models of
prediction of how people are “about to act”.
In April 2011, IARPA announced the Open Source
Indicators program (OSI), which would award
substantial grants to three research groups to
develop models that ingested publicly available
data like tweets, blog posts, and news articles to
anticipate “significant societal events,” such as
unrest, epidemics, and economic instability.

It’s important to remember that people had
a desire to connect with each other way
before the rise of social platforms. Social
behaviour is hard-wired into our DNA. It is
how we define ourselves and build
relationships with others. It is a powerful
driving force which brands and
organisations can tap into to help them
connect and engage with their audiences in
more engaging, useful and
meaningful ways.
The “sharing economy” is a disruptive
economic force that creates new sources
of supply. Whether this involves
underused assets (private cars, spare
bedrooms) or labour (people willing to fill
in a few hours as taxi drivers, personal
shoppers or couriers), it taps resources
that could not be effectively organised
before. Social platforms have also played
an important role in many elections
around the world, including in the U.S,
Iran, and India. From trends such as these,
we can see that social media can be a
significant catalyst for success by
empowering people and fuelling ideas.

Think forward >
We have compiled this report to track some of
the exciting trends we are seeing in this fast
changing space, and to help brands understand
where their future could be heading. By looking
at trends in business, content, technology and
culture, we will show you how social thinking is
changing the world we live in.
Mobbie Nazir - Chief Strategy Officer
Technology
Content
Culture
Business

Think forward >
Methodology
We have a trendspotter in each of our 11 global
offices who were briefed to look for key social
trends in business, content, culture and
technology. We reviewed the trends monthly
and built proof of these trends in each market.

What is a Trend?
We know something is a trend when there are many
different groups of people trying to find solutions to
similar goals. If it’s just one good idea, then it’s not a
trend. A trend is a collection of innovators working
(usually) separately to solve a problem.
For example, when we saw several websites and apps
streaming intimate and first-person views of people’s
lives we called this trend Voyeurism 2.0. This is a trend
because each of these businesses were trying to serve
our natural curiosity to be nosey and compare our
choices to our peers.

Technology
Content
Culture
Business
Think forward >

TECHNOLOGY
Trend 1. The Internet of Social Things
The idea of sharing your house, your bed and your
bathroom with a stranger would have been
unimaginable a few years ago. But AirBnB changed
that, and it’s now worth billions. AirBnB gave us the
capacity to share objects that previously we had to
own.
The Internet of Social Things is a trend which is
seeing us becoming happier to share everyday
objects socially through our smartphones. Bikes,
umbrellas - nothing is safe...
Effort Level - HIGH
Time to Mainstream - 12 months

Umbrella Here
This is an app + umbrella
combo that tells its users
when there is an umbrella
available nearby for sharing.
August Smartlock
The August Smartlock allows
you to share access to your
house with anyone you
choose. This tech will open up
the ability to socially share our
the ‘things’ in our houses.
The Internet of Social Things - Examples
DriveJoy
This website/app is establishing
itself in the UK as AirBnB for
cars. Why leave your car in the
driveway when it can be on the
road making money for you?

The Internet of Social Things
What will happen next?
In the future we won’t own as many things as we do
now. We’ll hire them from each other via socially
connected services like DriveJoy. Using technology
like the August Smartlock we will hire out our
household appliances when we’re not there and
have them put them back in time for us to use
them. How many of the items in your house would
you miss if they weren’t there? Would you prefer to
make a pound a day for hiring out your hiking
boots or have them sit there doing nothing?
The technology is there to allow this to happen.

TECH
Trend 2. Wearable Social
The forecasted wearable device market
value for 2018 is $13Bn. We are entering a
world of “Wearable Social” where movement,
heartbeats and emojis are a new form of
social language.
Effort Level - MEDIUM
Time to Mainstream - 18 Months

Wearable Social - Examples
PPLKPR
This app/wearable combo
captures biometric data and
gives instant feedback on
how your body responds to
people in real life situations.
Are you ready to find out
what your body says when
you’re around Neil from
accounts?
Digital Touch
Drawing on your watch, or
sending a heartbeat, a tap
or an animated emoji may
sound gimmicky, but Apple’s
Digital Touch has tapped
into one of the more
powerful opportunities
wearable tech offers: the
ability to further evolve
communication, into a
nonverbal format.
Hands Free Tinder
Why waste time swiping
when you can let your heart
decide who is the right match
for you on Tinder?

Wearable Social
We will see an exclusively wearable social
network emerge, or the real shift will occur
when the first affordable wearable goes
mainstream. When that happens brands need
to be ready for communicating in a new, more
personal language.

Trend 3. Social VR
There has been a lot of buzz recently around
virtual reality (VR) and its potential as a new
hardware device and software platform. The
technology, which immerses the user in a
computer-generated or photo-real simulation
of an environment, is slowly gaining
momentum. Currently most VR/360
experiences are a one person affair. VR 2.0 is
almost upon us which will allow us to
communicate socially in a virtual
environment.
TECHNOLOGY

Social VR - Examples
AltspaceVR
This is a social platform for virtual
reality that has recently received
huge VC investment. Users can
meet up in a VR setting in the
form of avatars to have
conversations, share online
content and play games.
Facebook Innovates with VR
Facebook has bought Oculus
Rift for $2 billion, which
guarantees its future as a
comms platform.
Zero Latency
“It’s like being inside a computer
game”. This Aussie immersive VR
game lets players fight off
zombies as a team in a 3D world.

Social VR
The future of VR/360 will be hugely affected by
how Facebook integrates with its Oculus Rift
platform. If they can crack how to get people to
communicate socially whilst wearing a VR
headset, then Social Virtual Reality will be a,
erm, reality.

Trend 4. Voyeurism 2.0
When social media went mainstream it was
exciting to connect with friends, colleagues
and old school pals online. But once that
novelty wore off, we started to look further
afield.
We’ve developed a taste for peering over
the garden fence into the intimate lives of
others.
CONTENT

Voyeurism 2.0 - Examples
Mukbang
This phenomenon satisfies
millions of people’s urges to
watch other people stuff their
faces. Young girls eating chicken
seems to be driving most of the
traffic. Check it out.
Watch Me Date
This was the Guardian’s attempt to
capture the ins and outs of a date in
real time. Two people went for a
date and both wore Google Glass.
You can explore the date from both
perspectives.
Watch me code
If watching people eat chicken isn’t
your thing, maybe coding is. The Watch
Me Code website is a treasure trove of
coders perfecting their art in front of
your eyes.

Voyeurism 2.0
People love the radical transparency that
Voyeurism 2.0 brings. You can’t fake this kind of
authenticity.
Brands will have to find a way to be warts and
all, no matter how painful, because anything
less will get overlooked and even outed for its
phoniness.

Trend 5. Big Social Data
Say ‘Big Data’ out loud and everyone within
six feet will know you work in marketing. But
Big Data is often misunderstood and
misused. The ‘Big Social Data’ trend is seeing
smart brands mine conversations on social
to help them create products their
audiences really want - in real time.
Effort Level - HIGH
CONTENT

Big Social Data - Examples
Crowd Sourced Gigs
Snow Patrol base all of their tour dates
and setlists on locally gathered digital
user data from over 30 different
sources.
All Things Hair
Unilever is the posterchild of this trend.
All Things Hair learns what hair-styling
tips women search for on Google and
forwards these queries to a team of
video bloggers, who are paid by Unilever
to create tutorials.
TOPSHOP Pinterest
Topshop teamed with Pinterest to
create a piece of tech which scans your
pins and reveals your colour DNA.
Using this palette, Topshop offers
matching items from their website.

Big Social Data
As brands start to develop products in near real
time based on insights gathered from
conversations on social, they will eventually
have to change the way their businesses are set
up. Could a soft drinks brand release a new
flavour within a week if that flavour started to
gain social traction? Could we see vending
machines that produced bespoke mixes and
flavours on the spot, depending on what was
being talked about on social?

Trend 6. Conscious
Community
Western society is becoming more conscious
of the effects of our actions on the world
around us. We’re now well informed about
sweatshops and human rights abuses in the
supply chain, which creates a collective
feeling of guilt. Online groups are forming
around interests that actually do something
good. This isn’t hot
air, but action.
CULTURE

Conscious Community - Examples
Be My Eyes
This app connects blind
people to a sighted volunteer
using a live video chat. The
volunteer can then see the
blind person’s surroundings
and answer questions using
their phone’s camera.
#SPCSunday
This Australian canned fruit
brand was on the brink of
collapse. #SPCSunday was a
week long community
campaign that saved the
hundred-year-old business
from laying off its employees.
Made in a Free World
This is a community of people
who are conscious of the fact
that supply chains can, and
often do, use slavery and child
labour. MIAFW built the
world's first software that
locates and addresses these
risks.

Conscious Community
People are starting to feel the power of the
crowd first hand, and it’s becoming
mainstream. A brand’s ethics will increasingly
become a matter of hygiene instead of an
optional way to add value.
CSR won’t be a choice, but a necessity.

Trend 7. Anti-Social
Anti-Social is a consumer response to the
negative effects of having to maintain a
social persona and being ‘always on’.
CULTURE

Anti-Social - Examples
Anonymous Social Networks
Anonymous social networks
are attracting huge user
bases. Whisper claims to
have 3.5 billion page views a
month.
Photobomber Flashback
Hoodie
When someone takes a picture
of you (using flash) while you
are wearing this hoodie, your
face will be obscured thanks to
its reflective covering.
Dolmio Pepper Hacker
Dolmio created a pepper grinder that
closed down the family WiFi, TVs and
mobile devices with one twist.

Anti-Social
We are seeing a rise in Anti-Social experiences being
viewed as luxury moments. Will social end up being
the new smoking?

Trend 8. Social Status Seekers
Seeking Social status isn’t new, but the technology
enabling this behaviour is.
Time to Mainstream - Ongoing
CULTURE

Social Status Seekers - Examples
Facetune
This is the No1 app in the
photo and video section of
the iTunes app store. The app
allows you to easily apply
photoshop-esque techniques
to your selfies to ensure you
always look your best.
Kander
Kander is a social photo-sharing app
that uses a left or right swipe to
allow users to deliver snap
judgments on their friends’ photos
before they post them on social.
Lily Drone
Sod the selfie stick. Meet Lily, a
drone that follows you to take
action shots while you do crazy
snowboard maneuvers for you to
post on Instagram.

Social Status Seekers
It’s a primal instinct to want to ‘fit in’ and be
seen as attractive, because this ensures your
connection to the tribe and your success within
it. Innovators haven’t ever stopped delivering
new ways of satisfying these urges. Now we’re
connected socially, this trend will explode in the
next few years.

Trend 9. Community Commerce
Community Commerce is where positive behaviour,
social and finance collide. We are starting to see
communities rally around common causes for good,
with positive financial outcomes for all involved.
Effort Level - HIGH
CULTURE

Community Commerce - Examples
Hand Up
Hand Up is kickstarter for
homeless people. Each Hand Up
user, representing a homeless
person on the website, pitches for
donations to help with rent,
mobiles and health.
Minneapolis Co-Op
This socially driven cooperative in
Minneapolis enables people to buy,
renovate, and manage commercial
and residential property, helping
community stakeholders shape
their neighbourhood
through social.
Paystobesocial
This is an app which pairs you up
with people making the same
train journey, so you can nab a
group discount.

Community Commerce
As more examples of community commerce
gain traction, brands will feel the pressure to
empower their customers to adopt this
innovative model for their own benefit.

Trend 10 (Inc)ubators
Some of the most innovative businesses are
giving startups a financial leg up in return for
first dibs on their genius. The excitement of
having some underpaid startups in the
building can lend a feeling of being an
innovative company, but the reality of
integrating three man team operations
within behemoth multinational companies is
no mean feat.
Effort Level - HIGH
BUSINESS

(Inc)ubators - Examples
Unilever Foundry
Unilever Foundry is the brand’s
plan to collaborate with
innovators to make sustainable
living commonplace.
Wayra
Wayra is Telefónica’s startup
accelerator that gives startups a
$50,000 kick, access to mentors and
its millions of customers.
Microsoft Ventures
Microsoft Ventures is a revolving door
of exciting startups. Their mission is
to empower and grow early stage
startups so they can realise their
potential.

(Inc)ubators
(Inc)ubators are becoming more commonplace,
but there’s a fine line between attempts at
innovation and the production of geniunely
disruptive products.
Best practice is yet to be established and it will
be many years until this approach has been
proven to be truly effective.

Trend 11. Social Currency
It’s been said that the internet is made of
cats. While that’s not entirely true, Social
Media got a bad name for its propensity to
share feline footage. But this has changed -
now you can buy a mortgage on WeChat.
Some people trust sending payments and
talking about it publicly on social. It’s time to
reappraise social as a cat meme dumping
ground and get onboard with the new
economics of Social Currency.
Effort Level - HIGH
Time to Mainstream - Ongoing
BUSINESS

Social Currency - Examples
Barclays Pay By Tweet
Barclays are the first British bank to
allow people to make payments to
each other and small businesses using
just their Twitter handle.
Snapcash
Snapchat partnered with payment system
Square to create money transfers on
Snapchat called Snapcash. Once Snapchat
users have linked their debit card in the app,
they can send Snapcash to anyone in their
contact list who is eligible to receive
Snapcash.
Venmo
The PayPal owned Venmo is a
way to pay your mates for stuff
while being social about it at the
same time. You can exchange
payments with people you know
via your smartphone, linking to
your Facebook friends and email
contacts, as well as your bank
account.

Social Currency
Ultimately, people on social want to spend
the least amount of time doing mundane
financial tasks. If social networks can
provide a consistent and trustworthy way
of transacting with financial services then
they have the ability to draw traffic (and
eyeballs) away from the more traditional
methods.

Think forward > Next Steps
So what should you do with all these trends? Good question.
We can help you take these social thinking trends and turn them into actions for your
brand. If you’ve got the appetite to innovate, we can walk you through the process one step
at a time.
The first step is to talktous@wearesocial.net

We Are Social: Think Forward 2016

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