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2008 Predictions from CenterNetworks
It’s that time of the year — prediction time. Most of the blogger heavyweights have listed their predictions and I thought I’d share mine after being pinged by James Thomas. I have decided to offer some predictions that might be considered a bit non-traditional. With that said, here are some of my thoughts for 2008:
Time Wasters Will Be Replaced With Time Savers
What the F is up with time wasters lately? It seems every meetup or party I attend, someone pitches some sort of time waster. I think what we will see in 2008 is a resurgence of time savers, similar to the Web 1.0 boom in that apps will actually be useful for us and increase productivity. The net result will be more time offline actually socializing with our friends in real life.
More Startups Close Doors But More Open Overall
Starting a Web business will remain very inexpensive in 2008 and that will mean more will dive head first. We will see lots of failures but overall we will see growth in total. Entrepreneurs will utilize the Yahoo theory of throw 10 things at the wall and see which one of the ten sticks.
Widget Advertising Will Take Off
Advertisers have continued to push the traditional banner ad for nearly a decade. Widgets offer way more interactivity and presence on a blog or Web site and advertisers will realize that widgets are the future of advertising. The other added benefit of widgets is to the site/blog visitor they don’t appear as advertisements and visitors might actually interact with the widget more than with any traditional advertising. It will be considered a way that companies can "join the conversation".
RSS Advertising Will Take Off
There are a couple of ad firms that currently support ads inside feeds (FeedBurner and Pheedo come to mind). As feeds continue their push to replace the traditional content, ad firms will realize the power of the feed and will begin to offer RSS solutions to capitalize on the potential revenue from the ads.
Bloggers Will Be Held Accountable For Their Actions
IndustryGirl touched on this in her prediction post. This past year we’ve started to see blogger reputations in various categories (no matter how large or small) taking hits for the practices employed by that blog. In 2008 we will see bloggers who treat their userbase poorly and act as bullies lose traffic and presence. I can only hope that those blogs who bully users and content providers are kicked to the curb. If anything can ruin blogging as a job for all of us and push people to "old media", it’s the actions of a few bad apples.
RSS/Feed Metrics/Analytics Will Actually Mean Something
It’s important to remember why we haven’t seen any improvement in metrics and analytics in years, and it’s simple – because it’s all about the benjamins. I am very hopeful that we will see some real metrics for RSS feeds, as you know I believe the traditional subscriber metric is dead — just as dead as the hit was in 1997. I’d be all over getting some panel discussions together about feed metrics and analytics so we can actually make some strides towards industry adoption of actual feed metrics. (and yes, we need an overhaul on Web metrics in general but I have beat that dead horse enough this year)
Apple Lives Large Early, Dives Late
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is living the highlife now with stock prices hovering at $200/share. Products are beautiful, talent is strong, tech bloggers and early adopters loving Apple. We have started to see a small ripple in the Apple armor with posts such as Dave Winer’s about his hard dive fiasco. Negative reports will continue to increase in number throughout 2008 and another tech manufacturer will step up their game and begin to erode Apple’s market share. Who will it be? I am not sure but I could see Sony playing a role. Apple will counter with lower prices.
Agree? Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments – I am very interested in feedback!
Is a great prediction. Will see what happens.
I hope your right about widget and RSS advertising taking off. I think that this could be a major step forward in the effectiveness of online advertising. Also about bloggers being held responsible. I find most very credible, but there’s been enough problems in the past that this is warranted.
Here’s a few of my predictions.
1) Businesses finally begin to make their marketing departments digital ready as they realize their customers are using media quite differently from what they were doing just five years ago. But they’ll find that there’s no easy answers as that media usage is now completely dispersed.
2) There will be at least three major social media marketing mistakes that will get major attention. One of them will likely involve a major political candidate or a major advocacy group.
3) Internet video phone services like oovoo (a client of mine) really begin to take off because they are now lightweight and easy to use. People will want to go beyond simple text of IM or just voice.
4)A company will create a suite of web-based social networking software that will include a blogging platform, photo editing, video producing and editing, podcasting, etc.
5)Speaking of elections, 2008 will be the (hopefully) last traditional broadcast-TV focused presidential election.
Despite some real breakthroughs, most political digital types have yet to be given a seat at the table. That’s because many campaign pros are pompous asses with big egos who are in fact terrified of doing anything new.
6) Women will be a major force in the success of social networking. More often than not, men are early adapters, while women are more cautious. But women seem to use the internet more for social reasons.
Allen, your list is pretty solid. I bet if enough of us make guesses, some of us have to be right!
My list: 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech
1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads
2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction
3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation
4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support
5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion
6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking
7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences
8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable
9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office
10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble
Whatchoo talkin’ about, Willis?!?! Sony consistently manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory! Sony Reader–doesn’t support Mac software (people that buy Macs would buy this), doesn’t have wireless, etc. Sony PS3–kickass overpriced product. Memory Sticks, anyone?
I totally agree with “Bloggers Will Be Held Accountable For Their Actions.”
Some of my predictions:
- Web/tech Conference goers are tired (sooo tired) of seeing the same faces as panel speakers. We will see an insurgence of new voices and more women as panel speakers. I think conference producers would be wise to get panelists who actually use the technology versus business/tech experts ie. Bloggers/Publishers in fashion, sports, politics, health, food, celeb gossip versus the Arringtons, Oms, Roses, or Zuckerbergs. I think techies can learn so much more from the users, and users outside of tech subjects.
- Techies will finally figure out that you need to speak more Oprah than Geek speak in order to cross into the mainstream, and get the masses of non-techies to use their product/service. (This is my fantasy)
- We will see far more stories in traditional media about people making a living through blogging and social media.
So good to see you round these parts Stephanie!
I can only hope that we will see more speakers – I’d love to be one of them. Conference producers believe that the names you mention will put butts in seats. I’ve got one speaking engagement lined up but can’t blog about it until next week.
Happy new year!
Mine are
A new blog will take over the lead from Techcrunch as readers get feedup of the non startup related stuff.
Mobile will be huge by the end of the year(I say this every year).
MS will buy someone big…
Google will start to lose its lead as more people start to realise that the results returned have got worse and actaully using ask brings back what you wanted…
Facebook will be replaced by a forum and everyone will be happy.
MS’s MVC framework will be released and rule the .net development world for a couple of months…
sounds interesting. but maybe some mobile predictions would have been also welcome? you can find more bloggers/media predictions on 2008 on twitter.com/predictions08
RSS advertising will only take off if metrics (your other point) get better and if RSS is considerably de-geeked. The latter is going to take a lot of work.
Good point about the de-geeking!
#1 – Sorry, but time wasters will here until the day we all die.
#2 – IRT to #1 above, the companies that are just BS will close doors, but with regards to #3 / #4 below
#3 – Yup..
#4 – I see this getting bigger.
#5 – hehe… Are you referring to those that make blogging rough for the other people? We shall see how that goes, just remember the other people have opened up doors. Yes, I agree they could be more cordial, but whatever. They would be a$$holes whether they were pro bloggers or serving you fries at the burger king.
#6 – Stats. What is a true indication of your status or even your valuation online? Is this blog’s valuation closer to $1 million or $100? I think this battle goes on beyond 2008.
#7 – Apple is riding high. I do like their products, and lucky for me I haven’t had any issues yet like Dave did.
1. I realized I am my own time waster and not to blame the enablers when I put down the controller and stopped trying to beat my son at Halo3 and got back to productivity. Rex speaks the truth.
2. Looked at another way, more good ideas may surface because it is easier too. As a result more will try…more will fail. It’s OK.
3. The more interesting battle will be between ‘branding, no need to interact” ads and “engaging, widget-like ads”. Big $$ will always be OK with both. Small fry’s like me can’t afford the former.
4. It better not distract from my RSS need/experience
5. Bloggers have always run the risk of losing readers if they don’t ad value. Why is 2008 different?
6. Your point is that they NEED to mean something…so what will happen so that they do?
7. There will always be a struggle between valuation and success. Apple is priced to continue it’s pace. If it’s pace slows…what is the real meaning of that? it’s stock price will reflect everyone’s expectation of it’s ability to kill it. Let’s just hope they keep trying to kill it…that’s all we really need…from anyone