Note: This is the first in a series of posts on some of Edelman Digital's eleven trends to watch for 2011. David Armano and I will release the full deck later this week.
One of the oft-repeated maxims in digital and social media circles is to fish where the fish are. Jeremiah Owyang gets due credit here for coining the phrase in this context. In 2011, this doesn't change. But as it gets harder to place bets, a smart play is to also fish where the developers are.
If you need a starting point, follow developer API trends - and how they're being adopted. According to Programmable Web, the top five types of APIs in 2010: social, Internet, mapping, search and mobile. Some of these are overlooked. Also notice the appearance of Sears on the graphic below. That's a sign of things to come. Marketers will start building their own APIs this year and also more actively courting developers.
The logic is simple. Time and again we've seen that the most successful digital businesses are those that have become platforms - part of the Internet fabric. Consider these examples...
Facebook isn't just a social network, but also a platform that conceivably can make every web site hyper personalized and social. Similarly, Twitter isn't just a web site but an entirely new platform for information that has spawned a tremendous ecosystem of applications and services. The trend is broader, however. Dropbox, Evernote, Bump and Instapaper are becoming essential services that mobile developers across platforms are adding to their apps. PayPal, in much the same way, is becoming the Bank of the Web. (PayPal is part of eBay, an Edelman client.)
Marketers typically don't try to become platforms or court developers, but that's all about to change. An ever-changing array of platforms will erode our fascination with single venues and get us thinking about how we can hedge our bets by helping developers succeed across a portfolio of them.
Our recommendation here is to dedicate some resources (and it can be small) to working with programmers - particularly those in the mobile and social space. Get in early while you can.
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