New rules of engagement in the age of content

STEPPING onto a crowded MRT train these days, one would be hard pressed to find commuters hiding their faces behind broadsheets. Instead most are glued to glowing screens of varying sizes, shifting around candy-coloured blocks with their fingers, reading novels and emails, watching the morning's market movements or the previous night's drama episodes.

Barely nine years after Steve Jobs unveiled to the world a mini-computer that could be carried in one's pocket, our appetite for information, for speed and variety of entertainment continues to grow exponentially. What this has created is a vibrant marketplace of voices - of various strains and persuasions.

So if the primary focus and investments in information technology have hitherto been about enhancing efficiency, as consumers have become ever more connected, there is much greater pressure for businesses to leverage the marriage of technology and content to engage individuals. Furthermore, failure to connect meaningfully could push businesses to the margins of the Internet landscape, where disinformation easily sets in.