Lamps that let your neighbors know how much electricity you consume. A couch that lets your friends know how much you dislike Lynette Scavo while watching Desperate Housewives. Real-time real-life reviews for the salesperson at the department store. A refrigerator that notifies your mother about your eating habits.

The future of products is in products that have communication and community built in.

People have a natural need to communicate and interact with their community. Until now, designing products that included the two, required you to gather your customers in the same physical location. Not anymore. Communications and community can be achieved regardless of where your customers actually are.

In order to do this, companies will have to become customer centric instead of product centric. It will not be sufficient to just make a product and sell it. The focus will have to be on the experience, not the features.