Living in a digital world – Star Trek or second nature?

We live in an increasingly digital world: we buy our clothes online, we buy our books through our Kindle e-readers, we share our family photos on Facebook and we plan our restaurant trips around the online vouchers that get us one pizza free…or that may just be me. Who can resist cheap pizza, eh!

But this use of the digital world creates an increasingly important digital footprint in the mobile and online landscape. Where consumers tread, marketers and business analysts will not be far behind, totting up the numbers, working on the metrics and looking at ways to engage with you as a customer.

There was a time before the internet?

For those of us who grew up in a pre-internet and pre-ecommerce world, there’s still a novelty factor to this digital environment. We still feel a bit like we’re living in some 21^st century version of Star Trek, with our smartphones (communicators), tablets (tricorders) and ability to transport our molecules to any point in space and time… ok we’ve not quite perfected that one yet, but no doubt we will.

Samsung are previewing a ‘smartwatch’ – see here – that looks endearingly like the teleport bracelets from the BBC’s 1970s sci-fi Blake’s 7 (which itself is about to be remade by Microsoft as an online series according to this news story). I tried making one of these teleport bracelets as a kid, so to see Samsung’s device arriving is a bit like being told there really *is* such a thing as a light sabre.

Embracing the digital world

But I’m Gen X – the old school these days. There’s a whole generation of Millenials out there for whom online shopping, buying your music from iTunes and sharing your lives on social media isn’t only second nature, but the only way they’ve ever known.

Facebook are clearly paying attention to this change and there are rumours of a ‘Want’ button being added to the popular social networking site – see here. Rather than just ‘liking’ your business’ FB post, your potential customers could ‘Want’ those products they like. That opens up a whole new raft of incredibly useful data for the marketers to pour over. It also provides publicity for your online store by posting on the customer’s own FB page. Promotion, metrics and a social media presence – all areas that are essential to any business, large or small, that’s aiming to embrace the digital world.

So, I’ll be waiting with my ‘Want’ button when they finally get around to building that working light sabre. Now where did I put my Jedi outfit…