I happened to read these articles about Smartphone adoption and Nine Rules for New Media back-to-back and thought, there's a connection here.

The Mashable article looks at technology adoption historically and suggest that the rate of smartphone adoption is faster than anything before it. The thing is, technology growth and adoption rates always speed up. I mean, were people as freaked out by the Roomba as they were the first Vaccuum cleaner?

As long as global wealth keeps growing, so will the pace of online adoption. Especially among twenty-somethings. And this is the connection. The CMO article states in rule #2 that Twenty-somethings are the New Advisors. This is exactly because of this increased rate of adoption, growth and development of technology. Younger people are used to this pace, they've grown up with it. And they understand it.

So as more and more people have the money to purchase and engage with technology, the faster the pace of development and adoption, and the more the power and influence of the younger generation will grow.

Watch out - your next CEO may be your daughter's age…

When it comes to the next big change in how we interact with Internet technologies, the speed of the connection, the speed of the computer and the capacity of storage will be the driving factors.

Social media was probably the last big shift, but that was still just words and pictures. When you think about every step of the evolution - from the slow connection when we communicated through text, to our 4G connection, where video is possible, it makes you wonder what comes next.

Especially as we now have the capacity for HD streamed video on our mobile phones.

Samsung's upcoming release of the flexible display has me dreaming of holographic paint colors for my car and virtual refrigerator inventory management...

A paper on Social Commerce by Dr. Natalie Pethouhoff got me thinking about the real potential for retailers on social media sites. Beyond 'likes' or positive brand sentiment, or even customer service, can brands eke out serious direct revenue from sites like Facebook?

She makes some bold claims, stating (or repeating) things like "In three to five years, 10 - 15% of total consumer spending in developed countries may go through [Social Commerce]." Crazy, when you remember it took 17 years for eCommerce in general to get to 5% of total spend.

For this to happen, Facebook (or similar) would have to be a seriously stocked and trusted engine. It would have to be Amazon-esque in volume of products, and from the looks of it, it's not even close. It would require an enormous investment on their part to get there and where would we see the extra cost reflected? In the price of goods sold? In membership fees?

While it's fun to consider what Social Commerce might look like down the road, I think there's real value potential in driving sales where they're occurring right now.

Companies could test their way into the market for specific promotions or products. For example, airline vacation packages and holiday sale items. Then, they could integrate social commerce information into their CRM— with such rich and complete data, they could build customer segment profiles and learn how and where to reach them outside Facebook.

Using Social Commerce data to better understand customer segments can help improve revenue and profitability across all sales channels. Because regardless of where the trends are headed, sales right now are in the store, so should brands support those?