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There are many exciting media trends this year that will penetrate the industry and are now in fruition, last year starting with the mega trend; Touch. We can already see within our new operating systems a dynamic transistion integrating gestures and elements of touch interface from the previous trend of the graphical user interface. We are now seeing a crossover of device/computer hybrids which pave the way for the majority of mainstream computers and this in turn may see the classic mouse keyboard becoming obsolete if this trend continues. A big trend to look for this year is News aggregation apps such as Pulse news – an app that collates all your favourite websites, flipboard – a social magazine application Zite – again Zite is a personalized magazine for iPhone and iPad that gets smarter as you use it. Most online magazines are already using business models to monetize with the use of an ad-split with the use of aggregation apps. The only issue of course with this idea is you can’t monitor the distribution as it is supplied by the aggregation app itself. The alternative way to ensure you have complete control over the distribution of your content and to ensure users get the experience you want them to get is create a magazine app. Our creative team have already started to develop interactive ads and are beta testing online magazines. The tool; adobe publishing suite [which our team suggests is the strongest player in the market] is a way to turn your magazine into a magazine app. Good example is wired magazine which can be bought through subscriptions. With the use of the new newsstand you can publish your content and subscriptions and it also creates an ongoing engagement with push notifications. A new tablet to be launched this year is the kindle fire which will undercut the iPad but will only feature certain social apps and will be used purely as a social media device.

Social Gestures will also become more prominent in 2012 – Facebook will be introducing this whole idea of frictionless sharing, we have already started to see this roll out with spotify if you have linked both platforms, Facebook now updates what music you have listened to. Any action that is created on the web is automatically shared within your profile when you have allowed it to. So this covers listening watching and reading. An example called social reader; a canvas app that you install through Facebook personalises and shares what you are doing. This is controversial atm – do people and business want this much exposure? This will be up to the individual to make this decision and therefore sensor what content they do publish.

Another hot trend this year will be the growth of TV everywhere – companies such as dish network – a new app where if you already subscribe to channels it will be an add on feature so you can watch live TV on all your other devices. Second screen experiences is an add-on trend to TV everywhere where as if you are watching TV and using a device at the same time you can engage and interact with live TV as more and more people are multi tasking. The way they will work is that the device will pick up on audio and interact. MTV have launched an iPad app using audio activation.

This year we will see the rise of TV and Movie Marketing Apps – we will see more apps based on or in conjunction with movies similarly to mainstream games based on movies. For example last year we saw the release of the super 8 film with the launch of the super 8 camera app, this became one the the biggest selling apps and works alongside the story of the Movie.

We can already see that Touch and Apps will defiantly pave the way as a new distribution channel for marketing.

Growth of social music such as spotify has taken form and is a prominent trend at the moment. You can now share your favourite music and is integrated with the social gestures of Facebook. Subscribed music is a controversial topic at the moment, its not sure to say whether it will stand the test of time. iTunes is still the dominant leader of Music and many people argue that you don’t own the music if you subscribe it. Artists such as Coldplay have turned down the subscribed release of their own album as the financial model is a challenging – you get less as a producer and artist. This therefore means that many other artists may end up pulling out screening as opposed to downloading their music.

html 5 – html 5 is already happening! Our team here at IndigoRiver are already testing the waters! Companies are now wondering which device is best to build on with the influx of multiple devices. This entails recruiting teams with the knowledge of cross platform knowledge building native apps for the iPhone android and windows. HTML 5 will be a universal method in terms of producing apps and with the cross over to web now it means the only knowledge web teams will essentially need is HMTL 5 across platforms. Smart and integrated. looking at the shift in trends – HMTL 5 coded apps will be tomorrows new optimised and broad way to develop apps.