The end of the year is a time for making predictions so here are ours, in the context of developments in the Societal Web at least.
- The world economies will shrink, meaning advertising revenues will fall and activity will drop (Per capita) – that has implications for web traffic and the business models of many social networks. The winners will be the ones with high traffic, or high niche value.
- Search companies will increasing use the ‘authority’ of searches to direct future searches. Ways to assign authority and measure it will be identified and refined. The winners may not be the traditional players.
- Collaboration will become more important, tools and software that helps to develop collaboration will blossom and many will shift to a cost per use/cost per member model.
- Free websites funded by Venture Capital or advertising won’t appear at the same rate, or even at all in 2009. New sites will tend to be funded through subscriptions. Existing free sites will struggle and there will be significant aggregation, at vastly reduced valuations, in the search for membership numbers and traffic.
- Semantic recognition of content will make significant steps forward, meaning that content that’s relevant will be easier to find, and more valuable.
- Engagement will be more important than ever, the resilient will have wide and deep networks, and be active in many places. The winners will also be leading opinion, not moulded by it, and driving content not just creating it.
- Social networks will develop a more serious focus, providing help and supporting members as well as allowing them to meet and communicate. Communities will provide the direction, and companies the infrastructure, and there will be a fundamental shift to collaboration and mutual support. Cultures will develop to maintain, more or less, ordered ways of working.
- Governments will continue to struggle to maintain the traditional economies, interests rates will remain at, or close to zero, and the money supply will blossom as governments resort to printing money in an effort to get things moving. One or more global organisation in each major market may fail before each market can recover as a result of the lost capacity putting the market back in balance with demand. The UK will hold an election which will have an indecisive result.
- Social pressures arising from unemployment will put strains on society a a whole and it’s likely that petty crime will increase whist violent crime will decrease. Riots in western cities may become common in late summer. Terrorists may seek to leverage this discontent, especially as the UK and US pull away from foreign wars, the intensity of which may accelerate.
- All of this will be the most documented, and the most recorded, of all time with the web providing space for comment, analysis and debate in the only real society that matters, the people. It’ll be harder to hoodwink, and easier too. Societal opinions will become more polarised in the early part of 2009 but ways of working together, previously undiscovered, will emerge that will begin to focus on people helping people as individuals, rather than relying on centrally controlled decision making, towards the end of 2009. That’s when the possibilities in the Societal Web will begin to emerge.
They could be right or wrong, and in 12 months time we’ll know!
Twitter this… Click here >>
