Push Ecosystem: Implications of the Apple Watch

Thesis: With the Apple Watch, the business around push notifications gets a massive boost. In the near future, we will not search for information, but the information will find us. Even before we know we need it. Push notifications will become our central medium of communication. The main players in this new market for notifications seem to be Apple and Google with Android at first glance. But it is also interesting to watch Facebook, which is currently creating a hardware-platform independent ecosystem with its services. This is probably why $22 billion was happily paid for WhatsApp even though the Facebook Messenger is being further developed in parallel. With this example and all other messengers, one thing must not be forgotten: The services are not about allowing users to chat with their friends, but about the application itself being as widely positioned as possible in the push ecosystem. Push notifications replace apps For companies, it is no longer enough today to just run an app. Even if it is found in the App Store, it leads a sad existence if it does not regularly offer a reason for use. But for an application to have a justification to reactivate the user via notifications, these must also provide a benefit. For example, because my friends are also active on a service. In the future, more and more apps will report via notifications. At the same time, the added value and intelligence of notifications will increase. The basis for this is that the underlying services are becoming increasingly intelligent. And the services respond by capturing even more data to learn even more about their users. The consumer will decide which services are allowed to get so close to him Yes, we are all a bit annoyed by push notifications. At least for now. Because a lot of it is spam. Except of course, what our friends write to us in messengers. Well, sometimes even that. ;) But if in the future our arm vibrates with every notification, we will think twice about which application we grant the right to do so. This new relevance filter will become a selection criterion for good digital services. Looking a little into the future, we are still quite at the beginning: Computers have evolved from room-filling monsters to boxes under our desks, from there to our laps and then into our pockets. Now we wear them on our arm for a while, before we connect them directly to our thoughts in the next step. An exciting future. Johnny ventured the thesis that we will already see at the re:publica whether the Watch will prevail. What do you think? (Photo credits go to my wrist model Julia)