In the coming year, mobile will continue to strengthen its hold on the industry, smart data will outshine big data, and real-time marketing will become an achievable goal.
With just a few weeks left in 2014, it’s time for some of my annual digital marketing predictions for the upcoming year.
Do you work for a firm where managers think employees really have to work (what is called) “full time”? That forty hours per week (or whatever is considered “full time” in your profession) is really a necessity? Perhaps you are one of those people with that conviction yourself — that in your job it is really not possible to work “part time.”
Of course you are wrong: working five out of seven days is really just as arbitrary as six days, or three – or twenty-eight for that matter. Chopping up the total amount of work that needs to done in your firm into blocks that suit our human physiology has nothing to do with the actual work. If the total amount of work that needs to be done in a firm in one week equals 20,000 hours, it is just as arbitrary to chop that up into 500 40-hour work weeks as it is to chop it up into 800 blocks of 25 hours. A five-day work week consisting of eight-hour days happens to be the social norm in many of our societies at present, but I have long thought that a company that disrupts that kind of social norm in its industry could potentially build a momentous competitive advantage out of it.
Jared Lindzon – Mining asteroids, an activity that could produce the world’s first trillionaire by 2030. 3D-printed cruises ships and hospitals. But no more taxi drivers, firefighters and (gulp) journalists. Indeed, the future of the world according to Thomas Frey is not quite what you might expect.
Frey is executive director and “senior futurist” at the DaVinci Institute, a 17-year-old think tank where he gathers a group of high-profile intellectuals for deep conversations about tomorrow. And we mean high profile: regular contributors to these “mastermind groups” include nearly every sitting governor of Colorado (the think tank’s home state), CEOs like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, the commissioner of the U.S. patent office, university presidents and science fiction authors like David Brin.
It may already be too late for Russia’s Central Bank to regain control. The collapse of the ruble has prompted a flight of capital as investors and savers in Russia seek shelter outside the country’s borders.
A CNBC.com analysis of money flows monitored by the Russian Central Bank shows that large cash hoards have already left the country. Nations in the ex-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have been disproportionate recipients of those funds. Ukraine is also a major destination for Russian cash.
Darius Fong – Where will the big money be in the music industry in the future? The topic of royalty payouts from streaming services comes up every year. The arguments remain the same, yet no progress has been made.
Industry leaders continue to focus on streaming royalties as the only future of artists’ revenue. As of yet, the fate of music monetization remains undecided. Some argue the goal is — and always will be — to simply get artists’ music in the ears of consumers. Others seek to continue getting consumers to pay for music. Still, it’s unlikely that subscription models will be the only answer to how music creators, both signed and independent, get compensated for their art in a sustainable way.
We complain 879 million times/year (and Facebook is our top target)
We complain about brands an astonishing 879 million times a year on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks. A full 10 percent of us find something to be angry about publicly every single day.
How long will it be before we see the first worker fired by a robot manager?
It is rather significant that economists are shifting their belief. Up until now, economists have believed that new jobs will replace lost jobs. Now the numbers suggest that is changing for the first time in history, and the trend is accelerating.
It’s also interesting to note the term, second economy. Defined as transactions between computers. That is measurable. It can be compared to the first economy. When the second passes the first, people matter less, in real numbers.
Not all species weaken and become more likely to die as they age.
Most people would probably describe aging as when we our in our youth we are strong and healthy and then we weaken and die. But, in nature, the phenomenon of aging shows an unexpected diversity of patterns and is altogether rather strange, conclude researchers from The University of Southern Denmark.
Among urban women in their 30s, freezing is trending.
Tiffany Angelo gave herself a few months to grieve after the abrupt end of her marriage. Then she moved on. Not to the next romance, but to something she could plan for: the children she deeply desired and would still have. With or without her ex.
There are some languages and skill sets that are more valuable than others.
One of the most lucrative industries in the U.S. is computer programming. The average salary for a computer programmer just hit an all-time high as it approaches $100,000.
“Transcranial direct current stimulation” (tDCS) involves passing electricity through your head. The current is relatively weak, so it’s not like the electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) used to treat extreme depression in mental institutions; sometimes called “deep brain stimulation.”
You sure have your work cut out for you if you work as a web developer nowadays. The influence the Internet has in our everyday lives is undeniable, therefore it is natural for all businesses and organizations to have a strong presence online. This means that there’s a lot of pressure on web developers and designers to produce impressive results in as short a period of time as possible. Luckily for them there are a number of tools that will help make their lives easier and we’ve gathered up the top 20.