PlaceMatters' Ken Synder using his smartphone as part of a Walkshop demonstration. We expect to see increasingly cool and robust ways to use smartphones in community decision-making in 2012.
Five trends I’m excited about for 2012:
1) Mobile Everything
It’ll all be about mobile in 2012. Smartphone sales continue to grow, and consumers are increasingly shifting from PC-based web activity to using smartphones. Because of the pervasiveness of mobile devices and the growing sophistication of both native and HTML-based apps, many of the tools that groups like PlaceMatters use will rely increasingly on versions that run on mobile devices. This will present some terrific opportunities, but it will also mean we need to be even more mindful of digital divide problems, ensuring that individuals without mobile devices and communities with lower mobile penetration are still able to fully participate and contribute.
2) Social Media Goes Even Bigger
Although Facebook use has already reached mind-boggling proportions (more than 800 million active users, according to Facebook), we expect that Facebook and other social media products will become even more universal and essential as engagement platforms, web portals, and discovery engines. Civic participation will increasingly rely directly on Facebook and social media and on tools that themselves are built on social media platforms.
3) All Politics is Hyperlocal
With apologies to Tip O’Neil, local just isn’t good enough anymore. As location-based apps like Foursquare continue their impressive growth (now at 15 million), as location-based services more generally continue to explode (Gartner projects the total user base of consumer location-based services to hit 1.4 billion by 2014), and with location-based functionality more deeply integrated in pervasive social media platforms like Facebook, we’ll increasingly see opportunities for community decision-making to tap into the local. Combine all of this with the growing use of smartphones, and we’ve got a recipe for community engagement tools that take full advantage of location data. The integration of near-field communication (NFC) capabilities in the next generation of smartphones, although largely limited to mobile commerce applications at this point, will only add to the range of opportunities, since this will add a substantial level of location precision.
4) Making Sense of Data
Although data visualization tools have become steadily more robust in recent years, the “big data” movement is likely to force big gains in the analytic and visualization tools that make these data useful.
5) Augmented Reality Gets Real
Last year we noted the continued evolution of augmented reality tools for mobile devices. As the augmented reality software becomes more sophisticated, expect to see more diverse and more interesting implementations, some of which may lend themselves to civic participation strategies. We are already seeing tools that provide information about buildings you are viewing through your mobile device camera and that allow you to superimpose information (e.g., kitchen appliances, furniture, clothing) to help you make purchasing decisions. We expect 2012 will be the year we see augmented reality tools become much more pervasive.
Honorable Mentions:
The Broadening of Broadband
Although broadband penetration in the United States is already around 80%, there are still sizable pockets with either low quality broadband or without any broadband at all. This is changing, however, and the availability of fat, stable broadband connections will continue to grow across the country. This should make it easier to conduct virtual public engagement meetings with real-time connectivity even in the more rural parts of the country.
Gestures Get Big
Gesture-based interfaces like the Xbox Kinect will grow in sophistication and market share, and don’t be surprised if they begin to integrate with mobile devices (including Gigaom’s prediction that: “A smaller version for the Xbox will arrive before the 2012 holiday season and Microsoft will demonstrate an integrated prototype that works with Windows Phone or a Windows 8 tablet”).
