In its assessment of the major trends coming out of this year’s CES, StoryTech — a partnership between World of Schwartz and The Opportunity Management Company that’s focused on “informed collaboration between storytellers and technology companies” —designated 2013 as “The Year of Lifestyle Tech.”  In other words, “today’s consumer lives and breathes new digital tools, with cloud-based technologies, smartphones, and ubiquitous screen-based content helping to guide them,” says the StoryTech team. This “lifestyle tech” is then influencing consumers’ daily lives via multiple social channels and digital touch-points, which keep people connected with each other. “Today’s storytelling, whether by content creators, brands, or consumers, is enabled by technology as never before,” the StoryTech team continues in its CES trends report. It’s this interdependent relationship — between storytellers and tech companies — that is and will be the driving force behind how consumers experience content. With that mind, here are some video-relevant CES trends that demonstrate this notion of lifestyle tech:

• Discovery: “It’s no longer about how you’re going to find content but how it’s going to find you. The reality is, the content most consumers find and interact with is shifting to what surfaces in their social space, not specific destinations or site. This means content is being distributed ‘node-to-node.'” StoryTech highlighted several developments that are emblematic of this shift to prioritizing content discovery, including Nielsen’s Twitter TV Ratings product and Apple’s hints at an upcoming Siri-powered Apple TV product.
• Mobile: “What have traditionally been off-line experiences are now two-way engagements with a mobile layer pivotal to delivering a direct response. Content providers have begun to incorporate mobile executions into on-air programming and events to create real-time viewing demand.” Looking ahead, as mobile connectivity issues are straightened out at major venues and stadiums, the StoryTech team forecasts that mobile will begin to deliver an “essential and expected second-screen service that materially enhances the content experience itself.”
• Fluid Content: Viewers are becoming their own programmers, according to StoryTech. They’re choosing the device, time, and place they want to watch content. Due to this “fluid content” behavior, “the screen no longer has walls and the cloud-based content becomes ‘smart,’ adapting to its device and user,” says StoryTech. The viewer will then look to program from multiple trusted content providers, shifting from screen to screen “based on need and context.”
• Independent Content Creation: This trend is “creating new development pipelines along with new business models for production, distribution, and media sales. Web series are now high value content whose budgets now include the costs of media buying.”

Read more at:

Cynopsis