Fad Driven Markets—Coming to a web near you.
Put on your rant filters because I’m all over-stimulated about the state of Western consumer markets. Somewhere along the road from WWII to the post-modern world economy we got really used to every advertising and marketing trick employed to grab our attention. In fact we have become addicted to the next big thing. The thought came to me when my wife was telling me about a Starbucks in Shanghai where the Chinese manager wanted to serve spaghetti on Fridays in some sort of bizarre attempt at Western marketing. My first thought was, “how naive and childlike.” After all we gave up Spaghetti Fridays back in the 50’s didn’t we?
Anyway it got me to thinking about how product categories and the sophistication of our marketing campaigns have evolved over the years. Take personal computers. They began as a home brewed tangle of user built pieces and evolved into a standardized mass produced product and then into a commodity with little to distinguish one brand from another and now we see signs of the computer as fashion. You will see what I mean along this trail.
One can argue (so I will) that this trend exists in the software industry. First there was custom built software crafted by in-house programmers (stacks of Fortran cards) then the major application and OS categories coalesced (Windows and Office) followed by commoditization (open source). Is Web 2.0 just the natural tendency of any mature technology to become fad driven? Is MySpace only the fashion of the day to be replaced by FaceBook tomorrow and TagWorld next month? Can we begin to plan for churn in the software industry based on waves of fad as the fashion industry has long done? If so it means a major shift in the way we see software. No longer will need drive the decisions of software consumers—now what is cool or fun will rule the day.
Classic white Gmail anyone, or would you rather have the U2 endorsed subversive black version?