There is now a generation that rivals the Baby Boomers who have now grown up not knowing life before the Internet.
We are living in an era of accelerated innovation that has shifted not only the level of productivity we have in the workplace but has also shifted the way society accepts and absorbs new socio-cultural concepts. In other words, we are living at a time where each successive generation accelerates the rate of change in which our society accepts new social narratives. For example, it was not too long ago that the concept of online dating was socially unacceptable. The first generation that truly embraced this paradigm shift of online dating was the millenials.
Before millenials made it cool online dating used to be a taboo thing. you didnt meet strangers on the street or even worse, from the internet, to get a date. Dating was a conservative social activity that was something you only did at church, school, and work because you were looking for "The One" you were gonna marry. in other more conservative cultures your parents told you who you were going to marry, totally skipping the whole dating thing. millenials redefined that because the reality is that kind of social thinking is now obsolete.
having grown up in broken families, even toxic environments where the mainstream social values just did not fit into their reality just didnt work anymore and so they had to make something that was better fit them in the 21st century. the millenial generation were the pioneering generation of our time in that they changed the way what we perceived as socially acceptable. millenials paved the way like true pioneers and the rest of mainstream generational consumers followed suit.
But now because the technology has enabled this activity among the younger millenial generation we in the mainstream have become accustomed to it. its actually cooler to find a date in apps like tinder, match.com and facebook than finding one at work, school, or church. trust me it used to be a thing.
We slowly changed the narrative among ourselves and have come to accept it. Without realizing it, we made a drastic leap in collective thought and social paradigm. the intersection of a pioneering generation, a changing social attitude of values, and an accelerated pace of technology together provide hope that the adoption of more radical pieces of technology is now possible today.
The change in social acceptance for online dating has been translated into other areas of our daily lives as well. in the transportation industry companies like Uber and Lyft has changed the way we accept the fact that a totally random stranger from the internet can pick up our daughters in his personal vehicle instead of her driving herself.
In recent years companies like airbnb, couchsurfing and showaround have redefined what its like to experience traveling like never before by focusing on the hospitality of the local culture. This community based model is a counter-reaction to the model made popular by corporate giants in the travel, real-estate, and transportation industries.
This sharing economy model have shown the way forward in terms of building a brand with a loyal community based around it. They have paved the way for community based digital ecosystem by focusing on the customer experience and redefining the underlying infrastructure around it. For example, with couchsurfing, they understand that the pain point for travelers is the accomodation options determine the experience. So they understand that local hosts can help the pain point in both accomodation and price. The success of the platform is held together by the accountability system they have in place that documents both the experiences of the host and the tavellers. This allows the platform to build a track record of safety and slowly builds trust among the community of users. Showaround has a similar accountability model that is gaining traction among travel enthusiasts in the tour guide industry. The community model implemented by companies like couchsurfing and showaround has proven to be a good example to use as a basis for its own community model because of its proven successful track record and safety.