My predictions for 2008

A bit late, but nevertheless here they are and -- as promised -- a more 'committing' set of predictions than last year's:

1. A combination of US recession and the waning efficacy of online ads will hit the Internet advertising industry hard, although "hard" is clearly a relative term.  Offline advertising may actually shrink, while online advertising will grow slower, perhaps even low double digits.
2. The Structure of Networks -- social and otherwise -- will migrate to the core of the Web, replacing the Structure of Documents on which it was originally built (HTML and all that).  Someone will figure out that applying the Google PageRank concept to networks of people is even more interesting: if we can identify influencers and how information flows among them, we can really start targeting campaigns.
3. 2008 will the year of the Return of the ERP Vendor.  SAP, Oracle and the midmarket vendors will make progress with their own SaaS offerings and will shrink the valuation gap with the pure-play SaaS vendors.
4. The Web 2.0 financial bubble -- fuelled by VC cash being round-tripped between startups buying and selling ad space -- will pop as a result of the weaker ad market and the failure of 100s of undifferentiated 'feature' startups to gain traction.
5. The mobile web will continue to be stymied by the difficulty of discovering content on mobile devices, Vodafone's new image search engine notwithstanding.  iPhone and other large-screen devices will help commuters surf the old Web, but mobile browsing won't take off until someone invents a new search paradigm that works on mass market mobiles.
6. As a result the mobile advertising market will fail to take off... yet again.  Those networks and technology vendors that were acquired in the past 18 months (Nokia/Enpocket, Microsoft/ScreenTonic, et al) will disappoint their new parents.  And the next generation of mobile advertising companies will have to make do with much less VC funding.
7. What on earth is UWB?  Anyone remember? Anyone care?
8. The success of the Nintendo Wii will spark a whole host of new physical interactive video games, providing a boost to vendors of chips to the console companies.  Perhaps a Wii Lite is in store?  Look to Japan for inspiration: this year's Christmas hit, Guitar Hero, was really a copy of a Konami game popular among Japanese teens in the late 1990s!  So why not portable versions of a DJ game like Beatmania or a competitive coordination game like Super Bishi Bashi? 
9. Social networks will see huge monetisation efforts and some applications and ad networks will make a financial killing.  But their performance will be erratic and useage of networks will be highly volatile as consumers get tired of being poked, zombied and voted HOTorNOT.
10. Some element of Open Source or "free" distribution models will become part and parcel of every software vendors' go-to-market strategy.
11. [Bonus, more of a hope than a prediction]: 2008 will mark the return of the Basic Business Phone, and it will be a runaway bestseller.  Nokia or someone nimbler will launch a high-performance phone that makes phone calls, has a long battery life, global coverage, and a simple, fast interface.  And absolutely nothing more!  I so wish...

Stay tuned.

Comments

[Alan Buxton]

He, he. I like Nr 11 (and I still have my old Nokia 6310 sitting around somewhere. Can't bear to part with it).

[Wade]

I think that the internet market will see small affects. The main affect will be on retail. People aren't wanting to drive around as much with high gas prices. Hopefully the election may bring better gas prices. My thought is that it is to force out the need for fossil fuels. If we all get outraged, we will eventually conform to hybrid vehicles. I think in 20 years gas powered vehicles will be rare.