Ubiquitous Infrastructure

The reality of life today is that we are always on, always connected. The technology infrastructure that unites us allows for a continuous flow of information that we, both, consume and feed. This information flow gets deeper and faster all the time.

This is the result of many factors:

• The digital medium itself
• Improved publishing tools
• Hunger for information
• Search technology
• Accurate measurement and anlytics
• Easy tools to slice and dice information
• Mobile access
• Social connections
• Citizen journalists pushing information in blogs, tumblelogs and microblogs
• Microapplications, such as iPhone apps
• Infotainment vehicles like Yahoo Buzz, Daily Motion and others
• Integrated consumption and media convergence

Interesting stories and news of product launches are all communicated almost instantaneously. This means that if you have something of great value, it can catch on quickly. Conversely, bad products will fail just as quickly. Word gets around faster than ever, and the value you offer matters more than ever. Not just because we’re always on.

The jury is still out on how being “always on” will affect humankind in the long run, but the speed of information flow certainly isn’t slowing down.

At 6pm, I bought tickets from Fandango on my iPhone immediately upon seeing a billboard ad for a new movie. I was hungry and my phone told me I was within minutes of eight different restaurants, three of them chain eateries I’d liked before. If my iPhone had triangulated my position just an hour earlier, while we were still driving west, it could have offered me a coupon for Jersey Mike’s subs – and then we would have been able to bypass the whole family discussion about where to eat.

Within hours of Oprah introducing a new book club selection, it can be number 1 on Amazon and hit 5 million books in print. But before she is even done with the 5-minute segment, I can have already downloaded the audio book on iTunes and be listening to it. I may have even already tweeted it. And during the couple moments I spent waiting for the book to transfer to my iPod, I realized the release date of this book was just two weeks ago. How long would market penetration have taken in the past?

Are you keeping up?