- - Here's wishing you more of the same wonderful excitement and chaos that we danced to last year!
Robin Good just posted some great Predictions for 2008 - These will surely spark some healthy conversation and strategizing. I am motivated to make my own 2008 un-predictions:
- Startup disruption (plenty of Open Source) ... still from anywhere... gotta love it! Clean Tech, Media, Biotech, and the Internet, in that order (according to intended VC investments).
- Major (MS) disruption is coming as we get more functional Web-based productivity apps - everything from Word (Zoho) to publishing (Blogger, Twitter), to a slew of social interaction/collaboration tools ... it's now finally OK to get that Mac without software collaboration/conflict.
- Mobile app addiction will deepen as big Telco Carriers let more 3rd parties in, AND more find their way around the not-so-walled-garden (skype to Utterz). The most powerful drug is getting local data when you need it most. Hey kid, want some vertical search?...first one's free, Dude.
- More, more, more multimedia distribution through nifty Widgets across the Web, your TV, any phone, that kiosk, etc...
- We continue to wish that all of that online Asian activity can be used as a reference for opportunities here in the Americas - but our cultures (from sensibility to Carrier stranglehold) are just too different.
- Publishers (Heavy, iVillage, etc.) continue to keep more of the advertiser's dollars by promising eyeballs that they can deliver through interactive ads that they struggle to deliver (on their own) so smaller agencies are increasing revenues by fulfilling for the Publisher's in-house over-worked teams.
- Getting published continues to be important...imperative even, as it gets easier and potentially more lucrative than ever (I made some nice Christmas spending money with my Lemonade Stand)
- The VRM Project continues to bake at Harvard with Doc Searls. It is the latest result of TPS - "The Power Shift" (to the consumer). Here the Demand and Supply flips giving more control to the buyer.
- Counting starts to really count so online media buyers can just start to spend those big bucks just sitting there waiting for us - really.
- Targeting (behavioral and contextual advertising) inches closer to true predictive content and the lines blur between editorial and Ads... Ads on Demand... TIVO for stuff to buy. Watch Direct Response evolve with Qoof and www.honeyshed.com
- Especially when creative (and budgets to support it) rocks like the Sony Bravia Bunnies!
- Recommendation Engines start to work and connect us with NMFs (New Media Friends - can be pronounced "nymph"). Pay no attention to Big Brother - for now.
- Tag mania starts to pay off (a semantic place for everything and everything in it's semantic place)
- Lastly, I predict that the majority of predictions are wrong.
Your turn...
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