An ex-colleague sent me this last week and it’s probably the best example of augmented reality to date, demonstrated at TED in 2009 (though it never quite refers to itself in that way).
I think it addresses a really good point: we have all this meta data about everyday objects, companies, products and services hanging around online, but have yet to find a way to successfully merge that with what we do offline.
It’s important to think not just as a consumer, but as a business person for a minute: What if you could “see” the top (and bottom) rated items on a menu? Or who thought which starter went will with the steak? Perhaps a little more scarily, what if they’re checking out your printer at the store, but notice that a significant number of people feel a competitor’s brand prints better images?
We’ll probably only begin to see widespread adoption of such technology in the next 10-20 years, but the implications are going to be huge and it wouldn’t hurt to think about them now.
Is the company that is clueless about social media, which is equally harmful for the fresh grads looking for jobs thinking they actually found one that’s social media-related.
I’ve had enough of this social media “guru” bashing (for the record, I don’t consider myself one of them). I’ll take the opposite point of view, a view i was particularly familiar with until about three months ago:
How about all these companies who think they want to be involved and throw around catchphrases like join the conversation but have no clue whatsoever what they should be doing? Yeah you know the kind I’m talking about. Those who want to know how many Facebook friends you have so that they can use you to invite some of them to their “influencer events” or readily dump you the awesome job of “setting up a Facebook group” (while Facebook is blocked by their firewall).
Those are both true stories by the way.
The fact here is there’s a gap. A gap which both sides are readily willing to exploit. I’m not agreeing with either but let’s face it, companies who hire the social media “gurus” aren’t really victims here. They get them because they’re equally eager and greedy at the chance to jump into this and will hire anyone, qualified or not, and don’t bother to do their research.
Think about it. The social media “gurus” lure companies in with the false promises of solving their social media problems and take their money, the companies lure job applicants with real talent with the false promises of a chance to work in real social media and take a piece of their soul. Either way someone is getting conned.
