Six Predictions for 2007
StumbleUponHaving left it a week, our predictions for 2007 reap the benefit of reading everybody else's. That won't make them any less wrong than any of our sources once we get to December, though...
Predictions for the new year
have a lengthy and dishonourable tradition, risky and
irrational as they are. I think the hope must be that by the
time you're proved wrong, it won't matter. The post will
buried so far in the distant past that anyone who brings up the
point that you said the world would be taken over by armadillos
looks like a tiresome pedant. Nonetheless, this being my first
post for the NMK site, I've decided to attempt to avoid all
possibility of disgrace by stealing the best bits from other
peoples' lists.
1. The Social Networks Backlash. It's a brave person that would promise that this will happen, but it may be the case that the largest, highest-profile social network of them all, MySpace, is heading for a fall. In the words of Danah Boyd, the biggest site on the Internet has turned into a "massive zit full of marketing pus". If the amount of spam, fake accounts and advertising means that it's hard to do what you want to do: communicate with friends and customise your space, then many users are likely to seek alternatives. The emergence and success of vertical social networks catering for particular geographical locations and interest groups also seems inevitable. While massive networks offer the convenience of being more likely to allow connection to your friends, vertical networks will contain a greater concentration of the people you might actually want to be in contact with.
2. Social is the Norm. Even if MySpace were to completely disappear, what it and its fellows have done to people's expectations of web software is irrevocable. Already, newspapers, broadcasters and magazines are developing social networks that are embedded into the core of their structure, promoting their former audience to media producers. Steve Rubel recently suggested that because this approach is so pervasive, the expression 'social media' has already run its course and that we'll soon stop using it. Given the blank looks I get from most of my real-life friends when it comes to such subjects, I reckon that's a little premature. However, the way websites get built and the way we use the web has already changed forever.
3. You Shall be Widgetised. Even though the very word makes me wince, I can't help but acknowledge the power of the widget. Those little doodads sitting in the margins of every blog and social network profile will also move into mainstream sites. At the same time, mainstream sites develop their own widgets. The concept of a web service as a place starts to erode. This is already happening. Where is flickr? Not just at www.flickr.com, but also in the sidebars of a million websites. What about the 'people update' service twitter? Yes, there's a twitter site, but since friends' updates can appear anywhere from your mobile phone to your feed reader, the application is almost completely dispersed.
4. Interoperability. There can't be many people who don't want their gmail log-on to also work with their del.icio.us bookmarks or their e-bay account. There's already a serious contender for a single sign-on system in the form of OpenID and a technology for managing this in the form of sxip. The initial offerings probably won't be entirely secure and they won't work everywhere, but the demand for some sort of simplification of how we gain access to our own information is such that the drive to implement, improve and standardise on these technologies will be nearly unstoppable. (Thanks to Tara Hunt for this one.)
5. The Privacy Panic. This is the reverse side of the coin to the advantages of interoperability. As we store more and more about ourselves on the web, our privacy is necessarily compromised. There are growing numbers of people who simply don't mind. But there are also plenty of people who do. As your online identity spreads to include information ranging from your exercise schedule to your pets, anxieties over security and control over who has access to that information will spread equally. Individual identity and reputation control services are already cropping up. I believe they'll experience considerable success over the coming year.
6. Better Words. OK, this is a wish rather than a prediction. The field of social media has some of the worst jargon ever invented. There's nothing very nice about the word 'blog', for a start. Face it, it sounds scatological - "don't disturb me, I'm blogging". I'm also continually made uncomfortable whenever I come across the term 'mash-up', which sounds as though it has something to do with school dinners. 'Widgets' sound like they're pointless and trivial: they are the plastic things in the bottom of tins of Guinness and John Smiths bitter, aren't they? Technical acronyms are normally annoying and this space is no exception. 'RSS' sounds scary which prevents people from becoming interested in it; 'MSM' and 'RL' are trite and useless. Still other terms are frankly patronising, like 'user generated content' and 'citizen journalism'.
1. The Social Networks Backlash. It's a brave person that would promise that this will happen, but it may be the case that the largest, highest-profile social network of them all, MySpace, is heading for a fall. In the words of Danah Boyd, the biggest site on the Internet has turned into a "massive zit full of marketing pus". If the amount of spam, fake accounts and advertising means that it's hard to do what you want to do: communicate with friends and customise your space, then many users are likely to seek alternatives. The emergence and success of vertical social networks catering for particular geographical locations and interest groups also seems inevitable. While massive networks offer the convenience of being more likely to allow connection to your friends, vertical networks will contain a greater concentration of the people you might actually want to be in contact with.
2. Social is the Norm. Even if MySpace were to completely disappear, what it and its fellows have done to people's expectations of web software is irrevocable. Already, newspapers, broadcasters and magazines are developing social networks that are embedded into the core of their structure, promoting their former audience to media producers. Steve Rubel recently suggested that because this approach is so pervasive, the expression 'social media' has already run its course and that we'll soon stop using it. Given the blank looks I get from most of my real-life friends when it comes to such subjects, I reckon that's a little premature. However, the way websites get built and the way we use the web has already changed forever.
3. You Shall be Widgetised. Even though the very word makes me wince, I can't help but acknowledge the power of the widget. Those little doodads sitting in the margins of every blog and social network profile will also move into mainstream sites. At the same time, mainstream sites develop their own widgets. The concept of a web service as a place starts to erode. This is already happening. Where is flickr? Not just at www.flickr.com, but also in the sidebars of a million websites. What about the 'people update' service twitter? Yes, there's a twitter site, but since friends' updates can appear anywhere from your mobile phone to your feed reader, the application is almost completely dispersed.
4. Interoperability. There can't be many people who don't want their gmail log-on to also work with their del.icio.us bookmarks or their e-bay account. There's already a serious contender for a single sign-on system in the form of OpenID and a technology for managing this in the form of sxip. The initial offerings probably won't be entirely secure and they won't work everywhere, but the demand for some sort of simplification of how we gain access to our own information is such that the drive to implement, improve and standardise on these technologies will be nearly unstoppable. (Thanks to Tara Hunt for this one.)
5. The Privacy Panic. This is the reverse side of the coin to the advantages of interoperability. As we store more and more about ourselves on the web, our privacy is necessarily compromised. There are growing numbers of people who simply don't mind. But there are also plenty of people who do. As your online identity spreads to include information ranging from your exercise schedule to your pets, anxieties over security and control over who has access to that information will spread equally. Individual identity and reputation control services are already cropping up. I believe they'll experience considerable success over the coming year.
6. Better Words. OK, this is a wish rather than a prediction. The field of social media has some of the worst jargon ever invented. There's nothing very nice about the word 'blog', for a start. Face it, it sounds scatological - "don't disturb me, I'm blogging". I'm also continually made uncomfortable whenever I come across the term 'mash-up', which sounds as though it has something to do with school dinners. 'Widgets' sound like they're pointless and trivial: they are the plastic things in the bottom of tins of Guinness and John Smiths bitter, aren't they? Technical acronyms are normally annoying and this space is no exception. 'RSS' sounds scary which prevents people from becoming interested in it; 'MSM' and 'RL' are trite and useless. Still other terms are frankly patronising, like 'user generated content' and 'citizen journalism'.
Ian Delaney, NMK editor.
Comments
You must be logged in to comment.