The new year is here, and the blogs are abuzz with speculation about what the next year has in store. Last year was a wild ride, with Social Media (i.e. Facebook) taking the spotlight, alongside Apple's much-healded entry into the mobile handset business with the iPhone. So what can we expect in 2008? Here are my predictions (I'd love to hear your comments)...
Apple and Google get cozy(er)
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Eric Shmidt, the CEO of Google, is on Apple's board of directors. Google bought YouTube, and Apple put
YouTube on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Google became popular by making vast amounts of data easy to access. Apple became popular by making powerful applications and software easy to use. Google makes their tools available for FREE. Apple makes their tools enviably sexy. Put the two together and watch the sparks fly (and the competition tremble).
Google buys Twitter
I would if I were them. It's a good fit for both companies. Twitter is more popular in the US and Asia than Jaiku (which Google
bought last year and hasn't done anything with), and if Google buys Twitter they will have a lock on microblogging (since Pownce is going nowhere). Twitter needs a sugar-daddy (not to mention a business model). If not Google, maybe Yahoo! will (which brings me to my next prediction)...
Google buys Yahoo!
This is a bit of a long shot, but you never know. Yahoo! has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Google wants the traffic and the user base - and another way to organise the web besides search without having to build it themselves.
Facebook bites the dust
This may take a few months (or all year) to really unfold but mark my words: the masses will dwindle to a trickle after losing patience
following a long string of PR gaffes, and the advertising dollars will dry up. The IPO will happen, but it will bomb. The fallout will be
minor. Google (with Apple and Yahoo) will swoop in and pick up the pieces and restore humanity's faith in social networking.
Mobile advertising becomes pervasive
This has been promised by marketing big-wigs for a few years now, but the networks and the devices are finally catching up to meet
expectations. I don't expect WAP/WML to finally take off, but rather whither away and die, to be replaced by real web browsers displaying
higher resolution graphics and video. Apple's iPhone will continue to chip away at the traditional handset makers' (Nokia's) market share,
and Google will finally launch their long-rumoured ad-funded Gphone. The carriers will be the only ones to lose out in all this
because these devices (along with others) will use Wifi to connect for mobile-web browsing, screwing carriers out of their overpriced data
plans.
Microsoft won't do anything special
Seriously, what are they doing in Redmond anyway, besides milking their recurring licensing fees and coming up with me-too products and
services. Oh yeah, they have the Xbox. Whatever. This company is basically growing old and slowly dying while living off the interest
from the gobs of cash they accumulated during the 80's and 90's. The only thing keeping them going is that most people (and companies) are
too stupid to realise that you don't need Windows and Office to run a business.
Comments
Right On!
Pretty astute across the board. My only point of difference is twitter.. I actually think somebody like Microsoft or even a more outsider candiate (i.e. Newscorp) will throw tonnes of cash at twitter just to "stay in the game."
I think Jaiku will seamlessly blend into Google's masterplan, and just like sketchup it will become a perfect application for a niche market rather than a revolutionary platform in and of itself. I'm really eager to see how jaiku dovetails with the google phone.
Also: don't be hatin' on the xbox!
Good points!
Greg, you may be right about Twitter. I'm just hoping it's not MS or a company like Newscorp because they are more likely to spoil it by plastering ads all over the UI (and the posts) and putting draconian restrictions on the API. If Yahoo acquired it, at least we know from their Flikr acquisition that they will likely continue to support the open API model.
I'm really interested to see what Google will do with Jaiku. I expect it will be mashed into the Gmail/iGoogle/GoogleReader ecosystem at some point (there's been chatter that the Goog is working on updating the "status update" functionality in Gmail for example). But c'mon already! It's been months since the acquisition and there hasn't been a peep out of either camp since.
I don't hate the Xbox. I think it's the best move MS has made in the last 10 years. I just think it's pathetic that the greatest achievement to come out of the wealthiest computing company in the world is a gaming system, which they produce at a loss and has been plagued with hardware issues since day one. The only real innovation on the Xbox platform is their Xbox Live ecosystem that supports a mini-game marketplace. But it's still just a fancy toy that the world could easily live without. Kind of like the Pleo. ;-)