Expert: Top 10 Tech Trends Credit Unions Cannot Afford To Miss

Byline: Frank J. Diekmann

MONTEREY, Calif.-A credit union channel on TV? "Free" marketing opportunities that most CUs aren't tapping? Members who want their deposits in another currency? All are trends that were touched on by technology consultant Ron Galloway. Among the tech trends Galloway

* The era of Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the dominant browseris over. Galloway said the primary reason people download IE is in order to then download the Firefox browser.

* Crowdsourcing is here to stay. Crowdsourcing refers to the act of taking a job traditionally performed by one person or an outside firm and outsourcing it to what it typically a much larger group of people online. The large number of people involved drives down costs. Galloway noted, for instance, he recently needed the distances to Orlando from approximately 100 cities in the U.S. for an article he is writing. He "crowdsourced" it and had his answer in 20 minutes for approximately $5.

'Money Is Freedom Chips'

* "Money is Freedom Chips." The concept of "money" and "banks" hasevolved dramatically, with people doing their "banking" in all kindsof applications, including Second Life, he said, adding that, "People have begun to think of technology companies, such as PayPal, as banks."

* Credit unions should prepare for more and more members who want their money denominated in other currencies than the dollar, especially the Euro.

* "Mobile is accelerating. Wallets are jumping onto phones and people are aggregating their accounts on phones." Microsoft, said Galloway, is all about mobile, including the emerging Microsoft tags that allow for scanning of information using a cellphone or PDA. He noted that a consumer can go into a Barnes & Noble bookstore, for instance, and scan a book's tags and then check to see what Amazon is selling the same book for.

Another trend: MoSoSo, or "mobile social software," suggests products based on what other people in your social network are doing and using.

Simplicity Rules

People want simplicity, Galloway said, calling. Google "the most beautiful web page in the world."

* "Mint.com is an aggregator you should be aware of. You will be doing business with them."

* IPTV, or Internet Protocol TV, will eventually allow everyone, including credit unions, to have their own channel on TV.

* Bank websites, like Google, are going to move to being ad supported.

* The web is moving from Web 2.0 to 3.0 where information searchesare based on "concepts." "It will look for inferences being drawn from one tag or another. You won't Google words, you'll Google concepts."

* Facebook is growing 3% per week. "It has financial apps and virtual currency. It also has a Lending Club that is growing that sounds a lot like a credit union. It's free, so why wouldn't you want to be where your members are?"