Self Service Junkies

Have you noticed that we [the consumer] are being trained to service ourselves?

When was the last time you went to a bank teller to withdraw cash? How many of you have had the “pleasure” of scanning your own grocery goods at the self check-out lane? Airport check-in kiosks are replacing attendant counters. And if you are going to the movies then you are probably ordering your tickets online and collecting them at the movie kiosk. In NYC almost everyone is now refilling their Metro cards using self service machines. Heck, you can even buy an iPod at the airport via a Zoom vending machine (see above picture).

Vending machines are no longer limited to soft drinks and snacks. They are becoming an integral part of our commerce landscape and we seem to be embracing this do-it-yourself approach. For the entrepreneur this consumer trend opens up new opportunities. It is spreading across many consumer goods purchasing processes where it is economical to eliminate the attendant and frictionless for the consumer.

My favorite example is a start-up company (still in stealth mode) where I am an angel investor. It is taking a service that requires a retail specialist with unique machinery and it is automating it with a self service vending machine. By doing so it has the ability to change a traditional process and service delivery channel that hasn’t changed for centuries. As a result, it can circumvent the existing monopoly that to date has blocked competition by locking the distribution channel.

The combination of automation, self service and networking (via Internet and mobile phone) will dramatically change the retail landscape.

I’m betting on it.

Express Yourself

Madonna sang “Express Yourself” in the 1980s. She was (and still is) a diva queen with a multimillion dollar record label and an audience watching her every move. Along with a very small elite she had the audience which provided the means to impact millions of people around the world. As for the rest of us, our self expression was limited to an intimate small network of people. In 1980, had I been at my current age, I would not have even considered writing these thought blurbs. The barriers of publishing and distribution were far too great to encourage amateur writers like myself to publically express themselves. But these barriers have since disintegrated.

The days of passively sitting back and browsing or zapping through the Internet are over. The exploding trend is for people to lean forward and proactively express their thoughts on the Internet. Today, user generated content (UGC) has increased to include a wide range of interaction from: rating a book, movie, or restaurant, asking a question or providing the answer, publishing a blog or responding in a talkback, uploading pictures or video clips, and interacting on social networks. The Internet census not too long ago measured in eyeball views is now being measured by the amount of content being published daily by you and me. The ease of use, access and free price point have turned the Internet into the ultimate vehicle for modern day self expression.

This wave of enriched media and democratized self expression is breading a new wave of Internet start-ups. Over the last few weeks I have been meeting with cool new start-ups that understand how to convert all this highly unstructured information that you and I provide and add structure to it. They are categorizing our self expression, repackaging it in new interesting ways, redistributing it or syndicating it to other sites, and in some cases use it to analyze what we [the Internet community] are thinking about. Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web are being used to describe a smarter Internet that is able to extract more meaning from the the ever growing sea of digital content.

To get a glimpse of what is possible I recommend you view Jonathan Harris’ talk at TED. He demonstrates a unique graphical interface which shows the emotions being published on the Internet at any given moment.