After waking up the other day with the sudden realisation that I’ll be turning 29 in a few months time, I began to reminisce…

29 will be a significant number for me, as it will represent 10 years spent working in the digital industry. Going back further still it’ll be a staggering 23 years since I unwrapped my very first computer on Christmas Day 1992 - complete with Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker.

A Fondness for Forums

Looking back I have to ask where the fuck did 23 years go?! I’m of an age that I can clearly remember the days when there was no Facebook - no MySpace even - where an impressionable young web designer such as myself was obsessed with forums.

Forums were great. They were where I’d spend all my free time learning, sharing ideas and experiences. They were a brilliant online social community, and what I’d consider to be the first significant form of social communication online. Having lived and worked through the evolution of various digital platforms, I have really fond memories of just how much I developed thanks to the insights of those forums.

Looking Ahead…

As my mind wanders from the past to the future, I often ask myself; what’s next? Social at this moment in time is the most important force in the digital landscape, but as we’ve seen over the past 10 years, nothing stays the same for very long. Will these social super powers be knocked off their perch (no pun intended), and will something else come in its place?

The increasing popularity of movie and TV streaming services has seen their rapid growth in the past couple of years, and I’m one of many to have indulged in it rather then turn on the TV. Netflix and Amazon alone are now commissioning TV shows on huge budgets. Will that soon be what we call ‘normal’ TV?

The BBC are planning on taking BBC3 off our screens and onto our desktops, tablets and mobiles. Will that become commonplace? Ask yourself when did you last buy a CD? I’d imagine you wouldn’t have predicted the answer 15 years ago.

Beautiful, Social E-commerce

We are now in a digital age where buying online is part and parcel of our day-to-day lives. Amazon alone estimated revenues of £5.5million during the recent Black Friday. For every high street shop I see closing down in my local town, an online store is being launched online to replace it.

Despite the increasing numbers of new, interesting and attractive e-commerce stores however, we are still stuck with a lot of the ugly stores that were created over 10 years ago. The fact that they meet their purpose and perform adequately has led to them being left behind in terms of aesthetics and experience. Amazon makes billions but can’t it be beautiful as well?

Shopping and social are still distinctly disconnected with social yet to be stitched into the fabric of the shopping experience, how far are we from a scenario where purchasing an item becomes as simple as liking a photo? This time next year will we see the arrival of a truly global online currency (remember bitcoin?) changing the entire way we shop?

We’re going through a period of digital dominance at this moment in time and it shows no signs of slowing down. The value of digital is just as important from your personal Facebook page to your business website, and no one can be afford to be left behind. In this world, if you’re a company you’re a digital company too.