This week the Freestak team has been immersed in the awesome atmosphere of Unbound London.

Unbound London is an incredible technology festival where innovators, founders, investors and corporations meet. We have been invited as one of the Unbound 50 – fifty high potential startups invited to pitch their own products and meet interesting and vibrant people.

As well as meeting some really interesting people who stopped at our stand to learn more about what we do, we had the chance to look closely at the latest trend in the tech industry. Plus we were really proud to showcase, with great response, all the incredible creativity and potential of our influencer community.

Among the different tech trends some looked pretty interesting, especially in the ad-tech and media sectors. The main topics that really got us thinking were live video and AI.

Live video

The time of live video has come. At one of the keynote presentations we heard how Facebook has bet on it, Instagram is pushing it as much as possible, Twitter has its own live video feature and Youtube wants to drive forward its live streaming. Every major platform wants to be part of it.

On the other hand, content creators consider Live streaming as probably the most engaging content today. As noted above, it is pushed by platforms (thus live videos have a higher average reach than traditional, recorded videos). Plus live video offers the opportunity to explore unprecedented points of view and experiences.

Every influencer should have a close look at what opportunities this new technology offers. Live video is not a live version of a recorded video but a radical different product for other types of content (and context). Examples of ways that content creators can use live video include behind the scenes access, events coverage from unique points of views and any other crazy thing that someone with a smartphone can come up with.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence was probably the biggest trend being discussed at Unbound London, not only by those people involved in advertising and media. We heard how every problem solved through a technological means will be touched by this new computer science paradigm in the future. AI today can be what mobile internet happened to be in 2007 – a huge technological wave that will transform people’s life in an unpredictable way. Does it mean having a self-driving car? Does it mean having someone that order your food for you when you are on the tube? Does it mean having someone that tells you what you should post to better engage your audience? Probably all of the above and much, much more.

Nobody knows how concretely this trend will become reality but it is certain that we’ll follow AI developments and include them in our platform to unleash and sustain the incredible potential of our community of creators.

Inspiration and connections

So all in all, the chance to be part of the Unbound London event and be one of the Unbound50 was great for us. It is always fascinating to hear about macro trends in technology as well as having the chance to talk to people who have a different perspective on what we are doing. If you get a chance to go next year or to one of the other Unbound events, it is worth going.