Hyperbole or seeing hyper trends early?
I don't jump on every shiny new thing, but these are some of the trends I went all in on before they were trendy. They were very obvious to me. I've never made any money from being early, but time has been kind, and it's been fun to use things that tend to work way better than anything else around at the time.
Trendy Innovations I Went All In On
- AAPL shares were an obvious bargain at $17 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and set the fanboi forums alight with one innovation after another. Like an idiot, I sold when the stock was still in double digits.
- Mac OS X was a quantum leap over Microsoft Windows. It was a bit buggy with plug-in devices, but as a workhorse, the software shone straight out of the box.
- The iPod was obviously the new Walkman, especially when paired with iTunes.
- VOIP was a journey from 2001 onward. Skype was the first app that worked properly for me. By 2012, I had my company phone system set up with PBex, the ultimate iteration of VOIP. Calls anywhere in the world for about £100 a year when I could have paid that per month with the national carriers running everything on PBex!
- Blogging as a new online medium was obvious at the second look, the first time RSS was poorly explained, and I didn't get it. Once it was clear in my head, I set up all my nephews with a WordPress site. None of them understood what their mad uncle had gifted them. Two years later, I was blogging for a living.
- AMZN was a bargain and a no-brainer, especially when my father, waving the latest book from his armchair in middle England, raved about the novelty of next-day delivery.
- Touch screens for the backs of airplane seats were in development at Synaptics and seemed obvious. Too early, I was flushed out of the market by the following event.
- I was in the US in 2006-07 for a front-row seat to the Great Financial Crisis. I moved to the UK to experience the British version! And then La Crisis in Spain. Having seen an astute American entrepreneur play both sides of the track, I was able to launch a very successful business before anyone realized what was happening. I had a 5-year head start on a brand new field of endeavor in the construction industry.
- WordPress content management - indexing articles on Google organic search - broadcasting on Twitter. This circular journey was quite novel back in 2009/10 when most in my industry were still in the Yellow Pages.
- First foray into bitcoin in 2015. Like many, if only I had truly understood it the first time round. I don't have a half-forgotten $400 BTC stack to brag about. Now I get it; I truly fear for anyone who tries to trade Bitcoin. It's savings, stupid.
- Nostr in 2024 is 2 years old. You have probably never heard of it. Just like most of my peers had never heard of most of the above, and now use it daily.
Trendy Innovations That I Gave a Miss
Most of Apple's innovations, apart from those mentioned above, failed to excite. Admittedly, like most people, I wasn't expecting the iPhone. I was distracted by talk of a revamped Newton Pad, which sounded far from convincing. The iPod plus iTunes was a revolution, whereas the iPad was an evolution, and too niche and rich for my blood.
I was never comfortable with all the social media fuss, apart from Twitter pre-2014. I failed to see the value in a life on Facebook, Pinterest, or LinkedIn. It was obvious where they were heading, out to eat everyone's lunch. I wasn't good enough with a camera to make a go of Instagram, fortunately. TikTok looked too mental to me, so I never even tried it. Minds.com; Google's social media failure, I can't even remember its name? Not tempted by much of Google's suite, to be honest, and they change their apps like most people change their socks. Again, I felt uncomfortable with their use of data and their intentions. MySpace? Never. Houzz? Nope.
I gave a wide berth to Ethereum and crypto in general. As they say, don't dabble in what you don't understand. ETH and the rest sounded very exciting, but not unlike the frog craze, cabbage patch dolls, and Rubik's cubes. I never jumped on any of those bandwagons either.
Did I mention that Nostr was an instant hit to me?
Trendy New Things I Tried and Didn't Dump Quickly Enough
I can't believe it's not Butter, and Flora margarine. As an olive farmer, I am ashamed of this skeleton in the cupboard.
Indeed, I tried most of the foods advertised on TV and embraced them wholeheartedly until I abandoned them for the next trendy abomination. Again, as a fully fledged member of the eco-growing fraternity of vegetarian plus fresh eggs and goat cheese, I am sorry to have been duped in an earlier life.
The Garmin GPS was an excellent device, but no marketing match for the mobile phone and Google Maps US military software. That miscalculation cost us.
Boddingtons beer with the widget, and Stella Artois captured my imagination and my liver before I abandoned them completely. I did dabble in beer for a few years but missed the craft beer trend.
Jury Still Out
Electric cars still make no sense. Private pensions are unaffordable on an average income, so I didn't bother. Ditto owning a house. Non-alcoholic beer is a carbo-death health hazard, aside from a taste that is really hard to stay enthusiastic about beyond the second or third.
Late to the Show on These Trends
I was a bike nut as a kid, but it took me until 1998 to rediscover the thrill of mountain biking.
I missed the Netflix revolution until it was mainstream.
Future Predictions
Unlike Gerald Celente, whose Trends Journal is a goldmine for forecasting trends in the economy and society, I have no idea about the future. I'm not a guru or a savant. All I can say is that anything groundbreaking I will hear about first on Nostr. My curiosity will lead me around the houses until I'm convinced, disinterested, or too lacking in energy or resources to care.
