VIA Recap: The Gang of Four: Why Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook Dominate the Market

Kara Swisher’s keynote reminded me why humor is an outstanding trait to maintain in a complicated and turbulent business landscape. Speaking to a roomful of top publishers, Swisher – with a wave of a hand – says, “You’re endangered – or really just irrelevant,” as she put up a slide of two dinosaurs chomping on each other, inspired by her 7-year-old son’s interest in All Things D – all things dinosaur, that is.

Swisher discussed the 4 key trends she sees among the GOF – along with new players vying to nab market share through platforms:

1.  SoMoLo - social mobile local are keywords for all of the large players, looking to combine their users’ passion for social media on mobile devices, often to identify local information.  “But no one is succeeding in local yet, “ says Swisher. 
2. Ubiquitous  - “Really more like promiscuous,” quips Swisher.   All GOF companies seek to be interwoven in all aspects of their users’ lives, she believes.   Poking fun at Google’s augmented reality glasses (dubbed Project Glass at Google), Swisher says she understands why Google is experimenting with them:  “Their business is search – they want to be with you at all times.” Of Apple, which carefully controls all elements of its hardware and software, Swisher hilariously likens the company to “an elegant fascist universe… like living in Monaco or Switzerland.  It’s lovely, but it isn’t going to change for your benefit.” 
3. Geolocated  - “You are never alone,” says Swisher, thanks to the geolocation abilities of mobile devices, allowing companies to highly target their data offerings to users.   Swisher speculates we are in the early stages of companies’ leverage of geolocation in their products.  Again, no clear winners yet.
4. Data Flood – We are all drowning in the flood of information generated by the Web and social media.  Companies who address this issue – through better search, content curation and other data management tools – are going to be winners for the new consumer, Swisher asserts.   Many startups are trying to address data flood and some of them will be gobbled up by the GOF.

Swisher says the “always on” aspect of technology platforms – and consumers’ seemingly unquenchable thirst for more access to more data through new platforms — has led to a phenomenon she calls  “continuous partial attention”.  Users are interacting with information all the time, but in smaller chunks.  “This is probably most important trend for content providers to watch,” says Swisher.