I've been sitting on my 2008 predictions for a good couple of weeks now. I've put a good deal of thought into this, and I've consulted several experts in the related businesses, as well as applied my own impeccable and infallible brainpower into coming up with these. I am not the final word representing all of Mashable's predictions for the year, though. As I understand it, there are others on staff here that will be pushing out their predictions before the end of the year, too. That way, you'll get to hold all of our feet to the fire on our predictions.
Social Networking Predictions
Presently, although there is significant overlap here and there, I see the worlds we cover in two categories: utility and social function. You've got the Zoho's and the Google Docs of the Web 2.0 world (which include social aspects), and you've got the Facebook's and the MySpace's. With the developer platform, Facebook took a significant step towards becoming the new operating system. Unfortunately, so far, the most useful application I've discovered on Facebook involves Pirates, and while Google has a great suite of utilities for productivity, the social functions are mostly afterthoughts or features, rather than an over-arcing strategy to pull them together.
The horse race between the two powerhouses is going to be the thing to watch. Neither one seems to be sitting on their haunches much either, although both have significant hurdles to overcome to achieve the dream of desktop independent OS-like functionality. Facebook has a major PR problem: people don't trust them with their data implicitly like they would Google, due to their willingness eagerness to sell it out with Project Beacon Bacn. Meanwhile, Google has a significant amount of work to accomplish across a number of corporate environments (including their own) to turn several unrelated systems into a unified social network, or risk being accused of hyping vaporware.
Both seem unlikely to happen from where we're sitting now, but my money's on Google accomplishing their goal of being a legitimate cloudware operating system that's taken seriously before Facebook achieves that goal.
Intellectual Property
Meanwhile, the actions of the general public couldn't be more far removed from where the laws are. More and more corporations are innovating faster and faster, and those corporations are lighter, nimbler, and smaller than ever before. When companies like Microsoft or Google step over the invisible lines that patent trolls set up, it is always a juicy pay-day when they can find an offense (and the courts down the road in Marshall, Texas are always willing to oblige). But as the companies get smaller and more de-centralized, patent trolls are going to be less likely to sue, and therefore, I predict
While we see all this going on, we'll also be noting the further departure from the government and big media mandated standards the mainstream society will be taking in terms to their respect of intellectual property. As iTunes and Radiohead have both shown us, people want to compensate artists for their work. People are also increasingly aware that studio systems don't compensate artists fairly for what they do, and have grown accustomed to grabbing content for free. This year, we're going to see a complete and total breakdown of the big studio music industry, and music sharing sites like Apple's iTunes are going to need to open up more widely the doors to allow smaller artists to sell their wares in their system.
Likewise, while we may not see the same sort of total destruction happen in the video entertainment industry, better gadgets that attach to our TV sets are going to surface, allowing independent online video acts to increasingly show up in the living room, as opposed to our laptops. Despite the fact that I think the prospect of a "Listener License" is a real probability, I remain hopeful that the will of the people will prevail.
Web Application Predictions
Attentioning is a meme that's gaining steam this year. Next year, it's going to be the new "social graph." Attentioning is not only a neat new buzzword and a way for the user to take back control of their privacy, but a way for behavioral targeting to really take hold. If you haven't read up on it yet, this is something you truly need to pay attention to. Open has been the clear winner in the buzzword contest for at least the last half of 2007. APML and the attentioning movement will gain steam next year, as they don't just use Open as a buzzword, but as a philosophy.
You're going to see bigger partnerships emerge, along that same token, between the APML movement, the OpenID movement, and the big dogs like Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Remember that whole privacy debacle called Beacon? At some point real soon Zuckerberg is going to realize that to keep that very vocal minority of people who like privacy quiet, he's going to need to give them better ownership of their profile and attention data - APML and OpenID will provide ways for this to happen.
Video, Audio and Media Predictions
You're going to see more significant partnerships arise between the various up and coming video and media organizations like TubeMogul, UStream, Podango, Blinkx, and Wizzard as they build out their various APIs and start talking to one another on a machine level. You're also going to see those involved in podcasting (both video and audio) making a much bigger impact on the social and rich media scene with the formation of the Association for Downloadable Media. I have it on good authority from the new leadership of the organization (which represents almost every major and minor player in podcasting and online video) that they will stop being hippies!
This means more reliable ad revenue flowing to independent producers. The significant distribution partnerships mentioned above also means increased viewership and listenership. Couple that with a WGA strike with no end in sight creating an entertainment blackout on the boob toob, and this could truly be the year of the independent producer's triumphant return.
In terms of the mainstream side of the business, I agree with Andrew Baron. The big nine have a high likelyhood of catastrophic failure this year. I think we'll witness the death of at least one or two major record labels, and there's a moderate likelihood that one of the major TV networks will be in the in the financial position Warner Music is in this year. They're just too big to make the transition to New Media adeptly, and almost all their efforts have been moves in the wrong direction.
Stupid New Trends: Green Tech
The real stupidity we'll see develop is in what is being called Green Tech or Clean Tech. One of the biggest "almost stories" I had this year was a buddy of mine who works at the EPA. I never got the official documentation I was promised (which is why you never saw it written up here), but the oral recitiation of the story I got from several insiders had to do with several major industry leaders from the technology sector sitting down with EPA officials and working out the standards for what constitutes "Clean Technology" in a data center.
One of the industry leaders involved also is a company with two letters in their initials that also happens to own a TV network - a TV network that was promoting something called "Green Week" on all their shows (this was just prior to the WGA strike). My buddy at the EPA though told me that of all the industry leaders at the negotiation table, their data centers were the worst offenders.
Of course, where there is a percieved problem, there will be hundreds of entreprenuers with supposed solutions to these problems, all of them with their hands out to VCs. Since environmentalism is more of a sham art than science for most so-called researchers in the field, most solutions to the environmental problem will not really solve anything, and be huge resource-sinks to the economy.
It sounds like I have an ultra-dim view of environmentalism. I'm not the type of guy who lives under a rock and believes that we can do what we will to our planet and expect no repercussions. Unfortunately, many of the problems that clean tech aims to fix either do not exist, or have been greatly exaggerated by researchers inflating their findings in an attempt to maintain their grant money.
This will adversely affect not only Web 2.0, but all other scientific ventures wanting to become technology, since private funding dollars will be diverted to these hammers in search of nails. As such, given the almost certain flow of VC dollars into these pseudo-sciences, we'll see a slight slowdown for investment into social and Web 2.0 style projects.
Cool Gadget Trends
We might actually see a physical "Facebook." I'm not sure what a MySpace would look like, but I'm sure it'll have a glittery coat of paint on it. We'll end up seeing these things before the end of the year, though, and then we'll know.
On the other side of things, we'll see more integration of our online software with things other than our web browsers. Twitter may not have the biggest or fastest growing user base on the net, but it is solid, and those who are there are influential and loyal to the platform. Other developers and companies I talk to regularly are taking not of this, and instead of making users come to them, they're constantly thinking of ways to take their work to the users.
Thus, we'll see plenty of inventive new products, and at least one or two breakaway hits, that integrate into the mobile devices we all use daily.
Boom or Bust
As John C. Dvorak says (to paraphrase and mix some metaphors), we still haven't seen the tip of the iceberg on this bubble. The growth of this bubble and the crazy valuations, despite being somewhat unbelievable to some of us, still do not come close to the insanity of the first time around. That's going to give this bubble a bit more staying power, and perhaps convert it to more of a boom, rather than bubble.