Tech MegaTrends & Social Commerce: The Wordle Version [Pics]

Techcrunch recently published a scanned image (embedded below) of a confidential overview of tech mega-trends to guide investment from angel investors SV Angel.

As you’d expect social commerce related themes figure prominently. So here’s a copy/paste transcript version, with high-lighted key terms, along with a Wordle cloud version of the transcript – a useful checklist for social commerce planning.

click image to enlarge

• Social
  • The web is now truly social via the explosive growth and wide adoption of FaceBook, Twitter, and other social media.
  • Openness and willingness to share: users are sharing more with each passing quarter.
  • Consumer behavior is becoming more “forgiving” when it comes to privacy and disclosure.
  • …this is in no small part due to mobile devices and smartphone devices being ideal for social web and instant sharing.
  • Relevant companies: Twitter, Blippy, DailyBooth, Zynga, Facebook

• Real-time
  • A corpus of time-relevant data is being created and used in new ways.
  • Twitter led the charge, and now numerous companies are integrating time-relevancy into products.
  • Collective wisdom and crowd-sourcing: with the real-time trend, people are continuing to provide services that are made more interesting/valuable by piecing together bits of unstructured information that can then be used for a new services mashed up on top of these layers.
  • Relevant companies: Twitter, Foursquare, all the LBS players, and other services where the analog status of users, and analog movement of individuals in various places are being turned into digital, real-time streams.
• Location-based Services
  • “Check-ins” are the new ‘status message.”  The “Check-in” will be a very important piece of structured data.  It is a precise update, which allows for trending locations, awareness of friends’ location, and ultra-relevant location-based ads.
  • Local discovery includes alerts for traffic jams, turn-by-turn directions, finding the nearest ATM or coffee shop, and ordering tacos from the best  Mexican restaurant in town.
  • Relevant companies: Foursquare is leading the charge, and Gowalla, Yelp, Loopt, Brightkite, Google Latitude, Rumble and other social networks to follow.
• The Urban Entrepreneur
  • A new field of entrepreneurs is developing where key insights are coming from founders in large cities.
  • “Behavioral entrepreneurs“: low cost to computing and open source tools of technology have led entrepreneurs to find innovation in behavior rather than technology, at least within social media.
  • Winners will be companies that utilize these important trends/technologies to provide services where users get massive value (output) from simple input.
  • Relevant companies: Jack Dorsey, San Francisco – Twitter; Dennis Crowley, New York – Foursquare; Jon Wheatley, London – Daily Booth; Bump Team, Chicago
• Mobile
  • Mobile is deeply intertwined with real-time data.  Mobile’s pervasiveness amplifies sharing and increases the potential of collective wisdom.
  • The power is shifting from hardware to those who can master: content, monetization, access, and the cloud.
  • Mobile is especially important for consumer-facing social products, as mobile is quickly becoming the initial or most common interface for many new products & services.
  • Relevant companies: Apple and Google will continue to be the leading app platforms.  HTML5 will lead the app-like mobile websites in the future.
• Flash Sales
  • Online shopping experiences ranging from high-end “invite-only” clubs to mass adoption deal sites have gained rapid momentum and revenues.
  • Daily deal sites, like Groupon, have finally unlocked the potential of local, connecting the online world (via mailing lists) with local businesses.
  • Targeted Groupon clones will continue to crop up as the economics of the business are so attractive.  Sites like Yipit will help users navigate such long-tail players.
  • Relevant companies: Gilt Groupe, Rue La LA, Groupon, Ideeli, One Kings Lane, HauteLook, Totsy, Editors’ Closet, Beyond the Rack, and many more.
• Behavior & Transactions
  • In 2010-2015 we will see analog transactions and behaviors rapidly convert into real-time feeds of data and services.
  • Search algorithms are no longer the lifeblood of IP. UI and UX are becoming increasingly important in social communities and products– that is the “new IP” driver– “Social Engineering” is replacing “Algorithmic Engineering.”
  • Initial product cycles are about finding key insights in shifting behavior trends and patterns.
  • Relevant companies: Posterous, Hipmunk, Foursquare, WePay, TweetDeck.