The end of the year is typically a time for prediction posts. We have our own thoughts on what we expect the future to bring (which we will publish this week), but in this post we’ll take a look at what some of our friends are discussing about the Web. While not everyone offers a prediction for 2009, we hope their wishes for the future of the Web and their thoughts on what’s important right now inspire thought and discussion.
Chris Brogan Looks Forward to a ‘One Ring’ Profile
After asking some of the Web’s brightest minds to predict the future of social media, Peter Kim compiled Social Media Predictions 2009 [PDF]. One of the predictions is by Chris Brogan who believes that 2009 will bring an end to the fight over a single sign in system.
Moving beyond OpenID, we’ll have a sliced profile for social networks that will carry both our full profile plus the ability to break out specific segments for specific sites. I might not share my passion for beer on my church network, and I might not want to bring religion to my business social network.
There will be some kind of “one ring” profile that will allow data pass through to the various places that use it. The reason this hasn’t happened is that each company wants to own the database on the back end. Someone’s going to win in 2009.
Ionut Alex. Chitu talks Google in 2009
From the blog that watches Google’s attempts to move your OS online, Alex Chitu offers 16 predictions for Google in 2009. Here are our favorite three:
- Google‘s search engine will lose a significant amount of market share as Live Search‘s position will consolidate.
- OneGoogle – a new interface that merges all Google applications so you can quickly switch between Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs without opening a new tab or losing your work.
- GrandCentral will be publicly available in the US and the interface will integrate with Gmail.
Dave Kellog Advises Corporate Bloggers to Get Real
Dave Kellogg, CEO of Mark Logic suggests that many corporations have latched onto the blogging phenomenon as a means to regurgitate their standard corporate messages. Blogging this way doesn’t work and if you’re considering doing it – don’t. As a CEO who has been blogging for over three years, Dave’s words are well worth noting; his blogging style is well worth emulating.
Dave’s recommendations:
- If you’re going to make a corporate blog, go real or go home.
- There is no point in ghost-written or PR-written blogs.
- In my view, corporate blogs shouldn’t exist. If you want a corporate blog, go find a few corporate bloggers instead.
- Encourage those bloggers to write openly and honestly about your industry.
- Let them ramble off-topic once in a while. You might discover something.
Om Malik: Tip’d Could Be a Daily Destination
Cautiously optimistic, Om sees great potential in the online community Tip’d, the site that brings together the best news on the Web relating to all things finance.
From Om’s post:
I find 3-5 headlines that grab my attention each day, of which maybe two are worth reading. Rarely do I find an article I would archive, as truly quality content is sparse. But this is a new service (it had 100,000 visitors in November, according to Compete), so I’m willing to be patient.
If it can get itself embedded into the financial blog ecosystem the way Digg has plugged in the tech world, Tip’d could become a daily destination.
Matt Mullenweg wants Blog Posts to Become More Interactive
Talking with Robert Scoble about Twitter and FriendFeed, Matt talks about the addictiveness of instant gratification, and how he’s looking forward to real time RSS and more interactive blog posts.
This is a partial transcript of the interview (at approx 03.33):
What I love about those two platforms is the instant gratification. You get that instant hit where people are replying to you right then, or you can drive a couple of hundred people to a link within 30 seconds. I think what they’ve done beautifully is the coupling of the writing and the reading.
RSS is fantastic but it’s a pull in technology. It’s not real time. And so for years people have been talking about making RSS real time. I think that I’d like to get to a point where Twitter and FriendFeed are mechanisms for this, where blog posts become a lot more interactive. Like when you do a blog post, there is no reason that as many people that see your Twitter within the first five minutes shouldn’t see your blog post in the first five minutes. But how it works now, is I go to my Google Reader twice a day and I see your new post – you don’t get that hit that we’re all becoming addicted to.
The complete video can be found here.
Duncan Riley: The Year of the Uber Blog and New Media
Duncan predicts that Uber blogs, blogs that combines different content streams into one large blog with one primary top level URL, will onclick="NGSubscriptionManager.TrackClickView('478106', '6706638464');">explode in 2009.
In 2009 big will be better. Not big networks of many sites, but big blogs that break out of the narrow niche focus that has been typical of commercial blogging until now, and instead go wide in content but focused on one brand and one URL.
The rise of the uber blog will also mark the beginning of the time new media starts to surpass old media.
Pew Internet and American Life Project: The Future of the Internet 2020
Rather than making predictions for 2009, the Pew Internet and American Life Project canvassed Internet specialists for their take on what we can expect in the year 2020.
Some of the predictions: The mobile phone will be the primary tool for connecting to the Internet; Voice recognition and touch technology will become more common, and Internet architecture will improve not by starting over, but by next-generation engineering of the network.
