Apparently The Who never performed "Going Mobile" on stage together, so here's Daltrey playing it. At any rate, what happened in 2013 was that it became insanely clear that your business has to have a mobile-friendly site. You can read our earlier posts on the topic, where we use the stats like "20% of American internet users already access the web ONLY on mobile phones and tablets" to scare you into updating let you know how seriously we take this.
The holiday shopping stats brought the point home with shocking clarity. Check out this sophisticated headline from Business Insider: People Shopped Online Like Crazy Over The Holidays.
Other things that happened: Pinterest exploded. If you sell stuff or aspirational services, you need a Pinterest presence. Here's a TechCrunch headline: "On Cyber Monday, Pinterest More Than Tripled The Revenue Sent To Online Retailers." What, you thought we were kidding all those times we ranted about how you should get on Pinterest?
Google changed the search landscape with Hummingbird, its "semantic search" platform. Black and grey hat SEOs were put on notice again, and experienced documented ranking loss. Clearly, Google is not giving up on their determination to provide a "positive user experience" for search engine users, now defined as content so cool you gotta share it. So they can sell your sharing. *cough* evil *cough*.
Also, Google Glass freaked everybody out. People printed everything from skin to guns on 3D printers, and everyone freaked out. About the guns. Nobody cares about the amazing, nearly miraculous medical potential for HUDs, or that bioprinting and telepresence may soon save hella lives. Probably sometime soon people will wear Glass and it will use their eye movements to target ads that will be served to their eyeballs. Fun!
Startup CEOs figured out how to make money off generosity, how to improve the lives of people who have a household income twice the national average, and generally ruined San Francisco.
And, of course, those people who hadn't lived through the Nixon administration (and thereby always assume the government lies about everything and tracks you everywhere) were surprised to learn that NSA is up in your business. Panopticon powers activate!
But overall, a certain techno-optimism prevailed. Because privatized space travel, Voyager leaving the Solar System, first cyborg recognized, Calico, printing skin, telepathic rats, and robots.