Oh, the hubris of year-end predictions posts. How did ReadWriteWeb do last year? We nailed a few of our guesses informed forecasts: 2011 saw the arrival of a $200 tablet, a Verizon iPhone, and Spotify in the U.S. We rightly predicted that Kevin Rose would leave Digg, NewsCorp would sell Myspace, and that HTML5 would begin to hit the big time.
I was right that the number of people blogging would continue to fall, but I was wrong that a digital news company was going to acquire a major legacy news organization. We were wrong about a few other things, too: Mobile payments didn't become mainstream, we didn't write a post called "Flickr: In Memoriam," and there was no severe privacy breach at a location-based service.
What's in store for 2012? Here are a few of our predictions (and more of our misses from last year). Let us know your prognostications in the comments.
Abraham Hyatt, Managing Editor
The relative success of the New York Times' paywall (and others) will drive more experiments in getting people to pay for online content. Thanks to the Times' example, a lot newspapers and magazines will realize their print product doesn't have to be an albatross around their neck. As a result of package print/digital deals, newspaper circulation rates will slow their fall? No, that can't be right.John Paul Titlow, Writer
Location-based social networks like Foursquare will continue grow in popularity, but will still be a far cry from reaching mainstream status by the end of 2012. The concept will be made more palatable among everyday consumers thanks to their continued exposure to check-ins on Facebook and better promotional deals and coupons at local businesses for Foursquare users.Dan Rowinski, Writer
Jared Smith, Webmaster

Joe Brockmeier, Writer