If you're asking what the next big thing is, you're asking the wrong question.

Admittedly, I rail on a lot of things in this blog. Sometimes it's easier to identify the things that colleges SHOULDN'T be doing rather than the things they should. So when I was working out last night, I asked myself "Karlyn, what IS the next thing colleges should be paying attention to? What is Web 3.0 going to look like?"

I quickly realized I was asking myself the wrong question.

I don't believe that colleges are going to be early adopters of technology in their web efforts for the foreseeable future. I also don't believe that our audience are going to adopt technology at a rate that's any faster than the general population. Let's remind ourselves what an adoption curve looks like:



Most people who consider themselves "web people" fall into one of the first two categories, while most of our audience adopts a technology much later. The "next big thing" to us is not the same as it is to them. By the time we've decided a trend is done, it's just making its way onto their radar.

To be fair, though, technology is adopted at a much quicker rate for the most part:



It's pretty much just like your regular adoption curve, but the adoption and decline of the technology takes place at a much faster rate as new technologies are invented to take it's place.

OK so my point with all this: Instead of asking what the next big thing is, we should be asking what effects the adoptions of the current and upcoming technologies has on the needs, wants and expectation of our audience. For example, I wrote a rant yesterday about the unwarranted hype surrounding social networking. That does not mean, however, that the adoption of social networking has not had a profound impact on the way that our audience uses the web and the expectations they have from us:

-Students have access to "real" information about your school from all the unofficial groups your students and alumni have set up and they will look for it. If there is a large disconnect between what your marketing materials say and what the unofficial groups say, you have a problem.

-Video is readily accessible and they can easily access content about any subject in the world.

-Blogs are a given and they aren't edited or censored.

-There is a certain amount of instant gratification involved with social networking: any piece of information is available at any time. Can your website or e-communications plan hold up to that expectation?

-It's all personalized and customized to their interests.  

This is the real impact of new technologies.  We're colleges - we're not expected to be cutting edge and I'm not entirely sure that unless you're an MIT or a CalTech, it's really in our interest to do so.  It's not the image that our audience is expecting, or one that they are looking for.  We are, however, expected to meet the needs of our users in relation to ever other website they have been on.  Taking inspiration from trends or technologies and applying it to our own practices is the real takeaway here.