Twittering Robots
06/17/2009 12:49
Two very interesting research reports were forwarded to me today. One notes that more than 40 percent of consumers are using social media. And the other is entitled, “The Market for Personal Robots Will Reach $5.26 Billion by 2015.” Do you use social networking? And if you do, why? Maybe the more burning question is, do you have a personal robot? Would you like to? Now these might be very disparate topics on the surface, but if you look further I think there’s evidence here that the complete disintermediation from reality predicted by George Orwell and other dystopians in the first part of the 20th century is closer to fruition than ever before, and, we’re all loving it. Who needs actual, real human interaction when we have so many ways to get away from it? Take Twitter, for instance. An academic study a couple of weeks back found it to be a broadcast medium, one to many – a master-of-the-obvious finding that no one was asking for, really (where do these grants come from??). Twitter’s appeal lies in the fact hat anyone can set up shop and become a little beacon of discourse, agenda-setting, whatever, out to the masses. Become your own Walter Cronkite. And do it in 140-character bursts. But maybe more importantly, it’s the height of laziness. Oh sure, some call this “efficiency,” or perhaps the more insidious “real-time information dissemination.” But social media is just another linchpin to worshiping at the foot of the inertia gods, as far as I’m concerned. The appeal of Facebook after all is the ability to sort of feel like you’re keeping up with long-lost friends, far-flung peeps and relatives, even the ones you don’t really care for, all by casting an eye over the news feed and updating your status once in a while. Meanwhile, MySpace is laying off people and is slowly slipping down the ranks of popularity, having been supplanted by other social networks. And frankly, I think it’s because its interface just takes SO MUCH WORK compared to the widget-happy, integration-lovin’ Facebook. So perhaps it’s no wonder that robots are catching fire (but are they? $5.2 billions’ worth?) for various tasks from rustling dust bunnies to cleaning showers. Who needs to actually clean anything? That might involve getting up from the computer. Now, if we can just get a robot to sit in the network, securely doing the Twittering for us based on brain wave information sent directly to it wirelessly ... that would be the perfect storm. Well, as long as it doesn’t blow up into some sort of Blade Runner-type situation with perfect facsimiles of ourselves (obviously grotesquely fat selves, one would think), standing in to do the stuff we can’t be bothered to do. Given the ongoing usage penetration, carriers have an immense opportunity to monetize social networks (since, true to form, social networking can’t be bothered to monetize itself) – but will they take it? If 40 percent of citizens use social media, how can they not? Beyond just racking in the SMS revenue, I mean. I suppose the opportunity comes down to how subscribers use social networking – daily, weekly, monthly? As part of another service? An AT&T executive just told me this afternoon that the Holy Grail is to just have all applications and content just sort of there in the ether ready to be plucked down from wherever one is (no doubt, kicking it in a lawn chair with a bucket of KFC that the robot just picked up and brought home). That includes wrapping in social media with carrier services that can be sold. Hey – is that a business model sighting? You don’t say. So again – do you use social media? You tell me – I have a robot ready to compile the results of your feedback. P.S. Now, ironically on the business front there’s an ongoing effort amidst all of this to make technologically-enabled communications more, well, human. With HD voice, for instance, virtual reality retail kiosks and telepresence (“like you’re in the room with the person!” gushed one Cisco exec to me –Big Brother would love it).
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