The Societal Web in 2010 – Our Predictions
The start of a new year is always a good time for making predictions, so here are ours in the context of developments in the Societal Web at least. Yesterday I reviewed how our predictions for 2009 had done here > but now it’s time to look forward again.
Prediction One: World economies will continue to struggle. Advertising revenues and traditional marketing techniques will continue to be under utilized as companies struggle to maintain their low costs base and seek alternative ways to interact with customers and prospects. We expect developments in business pages on social sites to drive new marketing models for the major players, and branding and brand recognition through social sites will become stronger.
It’s possible that some of the larger social networking sites may become sponsored by big brands or even purchased by them for the purposes of developing a marketing channel for a particular brand.
Prediction two: The use of authority in search engines will continue to develop, although at a slower pace than we predicted last year. The identification of real experts who can influence search at a fundamental level will take some time in terms of the algorithms to identify, follow and take account of the activity of those people. Individuals however will find new ways to source their information through social media followings of respected and trusted individuals, and software support for that will increase.
Prediction three: On a similar note, semantic recognition of content will continue to be developed as a means of pushing appropriate content to appropriate people at appropriate moments. It’s likely that as a result some traditional search routines embedded in websites will shift to a more open search model across many arenas and engines. Semantics will change search in unusual ways, driven by customer demand. As a result we wil lspend less time searching and more time finding the right things and that will change the advertising model for the giants like Google. That may not be very apparent in 2010 but developments in embedding advertising are likely to be clear in the next year.
Prediction four: Because world economies will continue to struggle (see prediction one), collaborative groups will develop that cross international boundaries for business in a way that has previously not been seen. Some new brands will emerge as a result of those collaborations, partly as joint ventures between existing brands, but also perhaps with one or two major new players for services.
Prediction five: Banking will continue to be in the spotlight for the wrong reasons as legislation around the world restricts the ability of financial services companies to act freely in open markets. It’s likely that the impact of that on small businesses will continue to be a restriction in funding which will mean alternative collaborative structures for the best ideas. The best entrepreneurial companies will change in 2010 as those businesses seek to manage their finances through a collective organisation as opposed to a centrally controlled one.
Prediction Six: Individual companies will engage more strongly in the Societal Web, driving customer service and sales & marketing in particular online to an extent not seen before. That will change the way consumers interact with the internet as well as the businesses themselves. We may well see a shift towards further opening computing standards and payment methods to facilitate those changes, as an example through the continued consolidation of functions on devices, such as the iphone, and the use of alternative means of payment such as using your mobile provider to manage payment transactions (“Add to my phone bill”).
Prediction seven: Cloud computing will take strong hold in 2010 with many businesses interacting and operating virtually across many countries and time zones, enabling small business to compete with the large in a very effective and open manner. It’s likely that the flows of capital around the world will shift as a result with effects seen in the balance of payments of the most connected and advanced (technology) countries.
Prediction eight: Unemployment will continue to rise, putting pressure on governments as the double impact of centralized spending cuts to meet government deficits in America and Europe coincide with private contractions in staff numbers as cost saving continues to be the primary focus of most major corporates. This could become a ‘perfect storm’. The end result is that civil disobedience and disturbance may become more common, and terrorists around the world may seek to leverage that effect. In essence, we made this prediction too last year and thankfully it wasn’t realised, in some ways we hope that this impact will not be felt this year either although we have less optimism about unemployment than before.
Prediction nine: Climate change will remain high on the political agenda and will create some shifts in global demand and approach in relation to fossil fuel energy sources. Oil will continue to rise sharply price causing some inflationary effects in the west. We anticipate mean prices in the second half of 2010 could roughly double to be around $150 per barrel. Small businesses and collaborative virtual groups will become more cost effective as large central office based companies find the impact of inflation hits them relatively harder, provided they plan and wprk in ways where they are less affected by the impacts of that change.
Prediction ten: Opportunities to source appropriate skills and experience for businesses will be easier than ever in 2010, with large numbers of unemployed but skilled people the opportunity to engage on short-term contracts or individual project-based pieces of work on a portfolio basis will be stronger than ever. Businesses seeking to minimize their own costs will look for the skills that they require at the best possible price, competition will be fierce but opportunities will be immense. We anticipate that this business model, portfolio, project-based, individual working, is likely to become embedded as the norm for millions of individuals in the major economies in 2010, for some a traditional employed role on a salary will never be seen again.
As we said last year, these could be right or wrong, but in 12 months’ time we’ll know.
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