2 weeks ago, everyone thought that the infamous Coronavirus, Covid-19, was just an exaggeration, and everyone thought about it as a mere media creation with no fundamentals. Born and “raised” in Wuhan, the Covid-19 has already killed and hospitalized thousands of people all around the world, with peaks in China, Italy and Iran. On top of that, the virus has become the catalyst for what experts are pointing out as another potential mass economic crisis. In other news, though, it has been already pointed out how the digital sector has been quickly responding to a long (potentially) term crisis. Let’s analyse a couple of examples.
The eCommerce Industry: A 50/50 Success Rate
With the Coronavirus outbreaking outside, people have decided to buy everything (from groceries to clothes) online. Being safer and easier, this has been the rise (or the fall) of a lot of different brands which have moved their physical catalogue to a digitally-driven architecture. Examples ranging from vegan probiotics to safety masks are definitely the brightest ones. Not only, in fact, some companies have seen a peak of 400% more visitors for those products, but, most importantly, they have witnessed this without any form of marketing or precise targeting, a symptom of the fact that, in the end, nothing beats word of mouth.
Tech Titans “Freezing to Research”
Google announced 2 weeks ago that its employees are totally free to work from home in any office in the world and, within their tech division, they also announced that every development project (ranging from Search to any flagship application) has been frozen to let their developers “research” on new trends for the foreseeable future. Tech giants have, in fact, decided to “freeze” their assets and development to ensure that, during these dark hours, their engineers were free to work on things which they actually enjoyed doing.
Blockchain Being Used For Computing Power
If your computer is running on Nvidia Graphics, you may have received a message saying “keeping your computer on could help us in fighting the virus”. In fact, Nvidia and a number of tech companies have announced how their neural network can be used to provide better data to hospitals, pharmacies and more. The usage of neural networks for such emergencies could set the foundation for major progressions in the future, especially in regards to the medical field, as it could connect remote hospitals and medical structures to main ones all around the world.
To Conclude
Coronavirus will definitely be remembered as a dark time in regards to the first two months in which it spread through Europe. With this being said, many will potentially (and hopefully) remember it as the catalyst which rebuilt the whole digital sector. Time will tell but, as of today, stay safe out there.