Diving Into Our Horrifying Cyberpunk Future

I still remember the summers of 1997 and 1998. Running through rural Ohio fields and those little manufactured woods in the middle of subdivisions. Building forts over creeks until the middle of the night. Hiding contraband in treehouses near friends' backyards in hopes it wouldn't be found. Not a cell phone in sight.

Yes, there was a time - it seems so long ago - when we survived without apps. We shared a house phone line with our entire family. If you wanted to know if a buddy was home and up for a game of "beat the hell out of each other with wooden swords out by the baseball diamond," you had to walk to their house and knock on the door. We wrote plans down on calendars, the kind printed on paper. This world feels impossible, now. Try walking out of your apartment without your wallet and your phone and see how far you get before the panic sets in.

Here in 2016, I think it is safe to say that my entire life is held inside my phone. I pay my bills, manage my calendar, maintain contact with friends and family, get my news, search for apartments, track medical information, practice sketching, buy groceries, control my air conditioning, and handle four email accounts with my phone. I can execute 90% of my work day through my phone while sitting on a couch in the back of the office or on a lounge chair by a pool in Walt Disney World.

And I'm not alone.

Today, 72% of American adults own smart phones. Asking, well, basically anyone in the tech space, that number is going to continue to grow. 100% saturation is no longer a pipe dream. But where is it all going? What is the end goal?

I name-dropped Walt Disney World up there, and that was not an accident. I write about tech advances at Disney a lot, because they are one of the few consumer-facing brands out there with the necessary resources and goodwill to test out the kinds of absurd and extreme tech concepts that drive innovation forward. One of those experiments was built around mobile, biotech, and wearable technologies - MagicBand.

I'm not going to get into specifics here - there's a lot to cover in this blog and you only have so much attention. Basically, MagicBand is a wearable piece of tech that Walt Disney World visitors order before their trips, instead of paper tickets. The bands are synced to their MyDisney profiles, allowing guests to make dining and fast pass reservations months in advance. Working alongside the MyDisney mobile app, guests can track their entire day through the park, manage their dining and gift budgets, schedule out the best path between rides and shows, and can set up special accommodations for guests celebrating birthdays and whatnot.

It also lets Disney track those same things. For an organization that has spent five decades trying to manage park traffic, ride capacity, and the incredible engineering of feeding and cleaning up after thousands of visitors every single day, this data is invaluable. This gives them the chance to know how guests move through the park, why they make certain decisions, and can shed light on how to maximize purchasing behavior (they aren’t actually tracking all of that, but they could). How powerful is data that can tell you exactly what percentage of guests are likely to stop for dinner at a high-margin restaurant, and how to influence them to increase that percentage?

But here's the thing: Disney is able to track and measure all of that information because it exists in a fully-enclosed system. Once you enter the park, most of the time, you don't leave until the day is over. Disney knows that once they have you in the door, any money you spend is going into their pockets, it’s only a question of when. Businesses in the real world don't have that kind of luxury. Businesses in the real world need to compete with dozens of other companies, not themselves.

Enter Facebook Messenger.

During this year's F8 conference, Facebook leaned heavy on tech - more algorithms, more bots, and more VR. Since March, they've begun making that message a reality, rolling out improvements to nearly every Facebook platform to create a more cohesive space for advertisers to play in. The integration between Instagram and Facebook has never been better. Targeting options across the board have become more precise and more focused on behaviors and consumers, rather than on plain demographics.

This week, the announcement of Facebook Messenger 1.2 brings the promise of bot-based lead generation to completion. Facebook Newsfeed ads can now take users directly into the Messenger app, where they'll be greeted by a bot waving hello and offering up coupon codes or other calls to action.

It looks and sounds incredible. Facebook is doing their best to sell the dream of an entire consumer eco-system inside one platform. With upcoming updates like Messenger-compatible microsites that open up within a chat session to integrated mobile payments, a consumer may - conceivably - see your product ad, open a conversation with a bot talking about that product, shop your storefront, and complete a purchase without ever leaving Facebook Messenger.

This could be both the best and worst thing to ever happen to social media.

Every good dystopian cyberpunk novel features at least one MegaCorp – a corporation that has become so massive and powerful that they have complete control over an industry. They buy up the competition, control the means of production, and buy out the media to dominate what and where people can publish opinions. Sound familiar?

Facebook gets closer and closer to Walt Disney World every year. They strive to create a reality in which businesses operate entirely within a closed system, gaining insight into every phase of the buying process, but losing touch with reality in the process. Marketers hate wasting money almost as much as our clients do, so when Facebook becomes the best place to publish content, it also becomes the only place to publish content. We already saw the negative repercussions of this back in 2013, when King of Social Media almost destroyed their reputation by cutting organic reach from 20% to 1% overnight. Facebook Advertising transformed from a “unique opportunity” into a “necessary evil.” Small brands and publishers shuttered the windows and left for other networks.

Of course, they came back. We always come back.

The ideals that Facebook is putting on the table are enough to make any digital marketer drool. I don’t want to undersell the incredible pushes in tech and innovation that Facebook is putting out there. But I simply cannot feel comfortable with a world where Facebook gets to call all the shots. How do we, as brands and brand ambassadors, adapt to a world in which consumers wake up, log on to Facebook, and manage their lives entirely within that app? It sounds crazy today, but back in 1997 I never dreamed I would be scheduling play dates and paying rent with an app.

Tech changes, and it changes fast. If we let them, Facebook will build their ideal world around the digital advertising industry, whether we like it or not. Right now, too many platforms are playing it safe. No one else is taking the risks. Facebook is playing Disney while LinkedIn and Twitter are fighting over being the best Six Flags. Google tried the “all-in-one consumer space” thing back in 2013 and failed. 80% of the Ad Networks out there are still trying to make us think Impressions are more important than Conversions. Apple is… doing whatever it is Apple does.

I want more Facebooks. I want more tech brands willing to risk it all on insane ideas that might change the world or might go horribly awry. It’s 2016! Uber is building self-driving cars and Space X is doing more work on space exploration than the frickin’ government! We’re in a new age of exploration and discovery, and it’s happening in cyberspace. Why is Facebook the only platform willing to grab the flag and run with it?

--------

These comments reflect the opinions of Tim Howell alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of his employers, partners, peers, or family members. Opinions or advice in this blog should not be taken as direct recommendations or suggestions. Any statistics, information, or metrics provided are linked to referenced source material, and are not sourced from any current or past clients, customers, or related brands.