{"id":83,"date":"2010-01-04T02:19:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T07:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/04\/three-important-trends\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T02:34:22","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T07:34:22","slug":"three-important-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/04\/three-important-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"Trends to Watch in 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Year is a great time to look forward and to anticipate and prepare for what is to come.\u00a0 So I thought I would use this blog to discuss a few important trends that I believe will impact the way we do business in the future.\u00a0 This originated from a question asked of me on a fellowship application: “What\u00a0do\u00a0you\u00a0think\u00a0are the\u00a03 most important trends affecting business, technology & communications?”\u00a0 Below is my response.<\/p>\n

\"2010<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/35043861@N08\/<\/a> | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/div>\n

1. Emergence of “Individual” Corporate Identity<\/strong><\/p>\n

As social media give companies an opportunity to step closer to their end customers, this new strategy also puts individual faces onto what used to be a collective corporate identity.\u00a0 Two cases in point: Peter Cashmore for Mashable<\/a>, Scott Monty for Ford<\/a>, to name just a few.\u00a0 While such corporate spokespersons have existed before, now they have a much more personal face that interact with consumers day in and day out. This new corporate “individual” identity can have important implications for corporate branding and even companies’ hiring practices.<\/p>\n

2. Mobilization of communication via geo-enabled services and mobile devices<\/strong><\/p>\n

Foursquare<\/a>, need I say more?\u00a0 Undoubtedly this represents great business opportunities for many companies. But more than that, this finally arriving mobile market is going to create new consumer privacy concerns and will require new types of policy to regulate how consumers’ geographic information can be used and protected.\u00a0 Coupled with the buzz on real-time search and interaction, business practice and public policy in this area can be complicated.<\/p>\n

3. Real-time verbal and textual translation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google recently added a real-time translation service<\/a> that can be integrated into an online chat session or used via its new Google Wave service.\u00a0 When the precision of this type of services improves, its impact on cross-cultural communication will be tremendous. With the help of the Internet and social media, individuals already collaborate in many areas such as R&D, open source applications, and cause advocacy.\u00a0 Now only imagine magnifying this many times to a global scale.<\/p>\n

In the spirit of this blog, I’d also like to refer my interested readers to the predictions made by a few other web and social media experts:<\/p>\n