Digital Signage Expo is coming up next week in Las Vegas and I’ve been asked to speak on a couple of sessions as well as give a couple of “lunch and learn” workshops. (You can see the various upcoming events that we’re involved with here.)

One of those sessions (S29 for those of you wanting to come) has the catchy title “The 10 Biggest Problems and Solutions for DOOH Networks Flirting with Social Media and Mobile Applications” and I thought I’d post a few slides and comments here.

#1 “Connected Audiences.”

It’s remarkable in this day and age that so many companies in the DOOH market don’t really appreciate the extent to which connectivity will define their future. I still get asked if social media is a fad. Really!

Twitter is an easy target for nay sayers. It’s easy to assume that Twitter is for time wasters - just like it was easy to laugh at the web when it first emerged. But that perspective is blinkered and shows a lack of understanding for the power and disruption of social platforms. Look no further than the events in Egypt last week to see the potential of social connectivity.

An average 20 minutes on Facebook in 2010 gets over 15 million posts, 10 million comments and 2 million photos. (Source: AllFacebook.com
) Social networking isn’t just for teenagers - even though Justin Bieber has more than 6 million Twitter fans and over 1 billion YouTube view. Social networking site usage grew 88% among Interent users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010. (Source: Pew Research)

The fundamentals are that human beings like to connect - and any technology that makes that connection richer is likely to succeed. The opposite is true - i.e. technologies (or regimes) that cannot leverage the richest connectivity are marginalized and eventually fail.

It’s not a leap to apply this thinking to place-based networks - it’s common sense. We have an amazing potential to leverage connectivity to social media, displaying it in places where people shop and socialize, to influence sales, marketing and user experiences - and in the process, grab attention and keep our screens relevant.

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