Every year, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield issues a report that outlines some of the wider trends on the Internet. The report offers a lot of insight into what is shaping the online space and how the future will look. You can check out the summary deck here:
As I have in the past, I wanted to highlight some of the points that I think are relevant in the digital political/advocacy space. Here are my key takeaways:
- Mobile continues to grow: Based on the numbers in the report, mobile (smartphones, tablets) is growing and will do so in the future. You absolutely must factor that into any digital campaign your organization runs.
- Private vs public conversations: There is a trend away from public discussions (i.e. Facebook posts) towards private, one-on-one conversations (ie WhatsApp, SnapChat, etc). How will this impact your ability to spread your message online?
- The visual web: Sites like Instagram, Tumblr, SnapChat and Vine all continue to grow. People are communicating visually. Are you?
- Immediate social distribution: Half of the total social referrals of an article or post happen in the first few hours of (6.5 hours on Twitter, 9 hours on Facebook). There should be a strategy to re-issue or bundle that information again after a day or so, to keep getting referrals.
Those are just a few of the insights Meeker offers in her report. At 164 slides, it’s a bit of a lengthy read, but worth it for anyone trying to understand where the Internet is headed.