Engineered serendipity at SXSW: paradox or progression?
In this guest post, Kim McKay shares her view on the standout trend from SxSW.
Entering our third South by Southwest Interactive festival, we had our ears to the ground and our eyes on the twitter feed for The Trend of 2012. Having witnessed the introduction of “location”/foursquare in 2010 and gamification in 2011, it wasn’t hard to spot the hype around ‘serendipity’.
A somewhat paradoxical notion, several panels and brands were keen to show how technology – or specifically all the social data that has been accumulating on digital folk – can be used to engineer social serendipity.
As Google’s Chris Messina quite simply put it: we’re experiencing a new generation of apps that “accelerate serendipity”. Users are no longer joining a social network to find connections – the onus is now on the social network to create the connection; Joi Ito, MIT, refers to it as a “marvellous extension of your peripheral vision”.
Great article thanks Kim.
PS the app you refer to is spelled ‘Glancee’ – http://www.glancee.com/
Great article Kim. I deleted Highlight after half a day. Too many notifications, a bit spooky and major battery drain!
Lost count at the number of buzzwords here
Good article – it’s pretty heavy on the jargon, but Kim you’ve probably down-jargoned it since SXSW! It’s hard to describe the future sometimes.