Over December we've reviewed the top Web products and developments of 2010. Now it's time to look ahead to 2011. The ReadWriteWeb team is always thinking about what's next, so in our final series of 2010 we attempt to predict the big stories of 2011.
Predictions are of course a tricky business. The braver the predictions, the more risk of them not coming true! Without further ado, here are my predictions for 2011 - 5 serious and 1 not so serious.
With the holiday season just gearing up and sales of eBooks and eBook readers likely to go into overdrive, analyst firm Forrester is predicting that 2010 will finish with just under $1 billion in eBooks sales.
According to Forrester's five-year forecast for eBooks in the U.S., 2010 will end with a total of $966 million in eBook sales. Furthermore, the eBook market is ready to triple itself, with $3 billion in sales by 2015.
Researchers from Indiana University have devised a method for predicting changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average through the analysis of Twitter updates. Using two mood-recording algorithms, the Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) and OpinionFinder, the team analyzed 9.7 million tweets posted between March and December 2008. They found that correlations between the calmness index, one of the six "moods" measured by GPOMS, could be used to predict whether or not the Dow Jones Industrial Average went up or down between two and six days later.
Every year the ReadWriteWeb team tries its hand at predicting the future. Looking back at our 2009 predictions, we got some wrong (I predicted that Facebook would sign up to OpenSocial) but others turned out to be on the money. I correctly guessed that the usual suspects would remain unacquired in '09 - Digg, Twitter, Technorati - but that FriendFeed would get bought. OK, so I guessed that Google would be the buyer. But close enough!
Without further ado, here are our predictions for 2010. We'd love to read your predictions in the comments.
This time last year, I wrote about the 10 ways social media will change 2009, and while all predictions have materialized or are on their way, it has only become clear in recent months how significant of a change we've seen this year. 2009 will go down as the year in which the shroud of uncertainty was lifted off of social media and mainstream adoption began at the speed of light. Barack Obama's campaign proved that social media can mobilize millions into action, and Iran's election protests demonstrated its importance to the freedom of speech.
According to recent predictions from analyst firm IDC, mobile web usage is set to explode over the course of next year due to market forces like the tripling of iPhone applications, the quintupling of Android applications and the introduction of Apple's long-rumored tablet computer. This forecast was among the firm's many year-end predictions released in a report that offered a broad overview of what's to come in 2010 in the IT industry, cloud computing, the mobile web and the overall technology marketplace.
Microblogging has become a very popular way for people to share news and information or even live-blog events in real time, but if you have ever tried to search through services like Twitter using only Google, the Twitter native search or any number of other services, you know how difficult it can be to find exactly what you're after. Today the Google Operating System blog reports that Google will be launching a new microblogging search service that will sort results by relevance and integrate those results with its own web search engine to trigger a "microblog universal search group", closely related to the way Google Blog Search works. If it turns out to be true, this is great news to those of us who constantly search Twitter for the latest news and trends.
A year ago, I wrote a magnum opus three-part post that attempted to chronicle some of the underlying changes happening in the economy and how this would impact web technology ventures. "Useful, but too long" was a recurring comment. So, here is a one-year update, much shorter. And hopefully a bit clearer, seeing as we are further into this transition.
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.
2009 is approaching quickly, and the consensus is that it's going to be a really tough year. The US financial crisis is triggering a global recession. Yet, a crisis is also a time full of hope. It is a time to re-think, re-tool, and get ready for the next upswing.
For big Internet companies, 2009 is going to be a very bad year for sure. Advertising profits are going to plunge, and consumers will spend less money overall, particularly on the web. There is little that can be done to change that. But what big companies can do is invest in innovation and killer moves that will bear fruit in the years to follow. Here is what we think would be cool for various big web companies to do in 2009.
