Predictions for 2007

I had my first Christmas cookies of the year yesterday, so I think it’s close enough to the new year to put on the Magic Prediction Hat and think ahead.  Here’s my take on what will happen in 2007, a year from now I'll come back and see how I did (new task in the Blackberry... check.  Technology's great.)

1. RSS will gain mass acceptance.  Feed readers become easier to use and more widespread every day.  As the general public continues to use the Internet for just about everything in their daily lives, I think 2007 is year that “RSS” becomes a household word and the average person finds out what it can do for them.
2. Customized feed aggregators will become a vitally important tool for filtering and finding relevant information.  Human-edited filters will replace magazines and television channels, and there will be much discussion about who should benefit from content monetization (creators, distributors, and/or aggregators)
3. RSS and ATOM will continue to see more uses that weren’t part of the original plan.
4. “Realtime” will be the buzzword of the year.  Where historical data is now almost universally accessible via RSS and ATOM, bringing realtime data to syndication machines will be the golden goose of 2007.  The data will come from everywhere, and realtime syndication companies will spring up to hook up all sorts of legacy systems to the Web for immediate data consumption.
5. Someone will develop a true meme-tracker.  It will use semantic text analysis to dissect the topics of discussion instead of just looking at hyperlinks to determine who’s talking about what.
6. Identity theft will take on a new form:  it will start to mean creating a false representation of someone else online.  It could take the form of setting up a MySpace or Facebook page for someone else, or registering a domain name for someone else.  In either case, the result will be that someone else will control what people see when they search for you on the Internet.
7. The Disney/Pixar dance will play out again in a different form, this time with many different companies.  Content producers will start to realize that people are getting used to consuming entertainment directly from the Internet (see YouTube), which eliminates the need to pay media outlets large percentages of the profits to market and distribute media.  This is already starting with the NFL starting to broadcast its own games on the NFL Network, I predict that it will happen more and more often as shows with loyal fan bases enter contract re-negotiations and find it more financially attractive to stream entertainment directly over the Internet.
8. MySpace will become un-cool.  As Fox milks every last drop of marketing square footage out of MySpace, its users will get fed up and eventually realize that they don’t have to endure the endless ads, clunky interface, slow response times, hostage data, and an uncaring corporate parent.  Its users will migrate to other social networks--as of right now my bet is on Orkut to take the lead as the new cool place to be.
9. User data will be recognized as the priceless nugget of gold that it is.  Governments will legislate about it, privacy groups will lose sleep over it, court cases will be fought over access to it, and in the near future it will drive the migration of user activity to private servers that can’t be accessed by third parties.
10. Offshore hosting will become a major source of revenue in countries currently known for their secrecy in banking because the data on them will be immune to subpoena.  Instead of having a bank account in the Caymans, you’ll want a personal server in the Caymans.

11. AJAX will be fleshed out and new development models will emerge that make the division between browser and server more seamless.  These new development models will extend the server-side object model to the client using a new kind of object remoting.

12. URI’s will become a universally-accepted unique identifier for everything, and standard database architecture will change a bit to accommodate this.
13. Downloading and streaming media will start to gain mass acceptance as a content delivery channel, courtesy of online video and the next-generation game consoles.
14. It will be far less cost effective to built out data centers and proprietary hardware and networking infrastructures than it will be to run applications on cloud/grid computing platforms.
15. Because of #14, the ability to run on a cloud/grid platform will become one of the most important requirements in new application development projects being specced.
16. Because of #15, Microsoft will continue to lose development platform market share.  The developer employment market will feel the impact of this immediately, Windows as a server platform won’t feel the hurt for another year or two, when the applications being developed today are rolled out and Microsoft suddenly has no proprietary third-party applications to sell its platform.
17. Apple will release an iPod with a touch-screen interface and I will buy it immediately.

What do you think, anything to add?

Comments

[Robert Young]

Very nice set of predictions, Jason. I think I'll write a post over at GigaOM covering some of them (with a link back to you, of course).

[Jason Kolb]

Thanks, Robert! I'll look forward to reading it :)

[Josh Maher]

Well the first few support my predictions

http://joshmaher.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/2007-prediction-blogs-will-be-replaced/

Then the last few are a little odd and unrelated...grid computing is still specialized and will be in 07

[Josh Maher]

Well the first few support my predictions

http://joshmaher.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/2007-prediction-blogs-will-be-replaced/

Then the last few are a little odd and unrelated...grid computing is still specialized and will be in 07

[Mama Duck]

Oh, I want that touch-screen iPod too! I think you are spot on with the first set of predictions for sure.

[Jennifer Lynn]

Looks like I'll have to stop back this time next year to see how this all pans out. Very interesting and intelligent predictions.

[Jason Kolb]

Thanks! We'll see just how intelligent they are about 365 days from now ;)

[garrido]

#10 is really smart, hadn't occurred to me but it seems quite feasible that it will happen sooner or later.
From #14 to #17, I hope you're right :)

BTW, I'm also in the Group Writing Project, check it out.

[David]

I really hope to see more RSS acceptance and that MySpace will die...please MySpace...please.

Great post.

[Madhur Kapoor]

Nice perdictions Jason . I absolutely agree with the RSS one and hope that apple does release that type of Ipod .

[Rashenbo]

Now that's one heck of a list! Great job there. I am with you and I think we will see some great advancements in social acceptance of RSS feeds (and podcasts will also scoot right along).

I also hope that Myspace loses some of it's standing and ouch, I really don't want to think about internet identity theft... but it's too true.

This is definitely a great list. Thank you for sharing.

I found you through the ProBlogger Predictions & Reviews writing project.

Cheers,

Writing Aspirations

[Martin Neumann]

Ha, and here I thought MySpace was already getting uncool. :-)

Good, thought provoking list.

[Chris]

Number 10 is the best, and not a bad idea. If you get into any copyright trouble, host in the Caymans. Also, I hope the RSS predictions are correct as well because it currently is undertutilized.

[Rob Schaumer]

Great Post Jason,

It will be interesting to see how #8 pans out.
I read an article in Business 2.0 about Cyworld, a Korean version of myspace with avatars and all sorts of visual interaction.
Here is the link for the article. http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/27/technology/cyworld0727.biz2/index.htm?postversion=2006072711

[cjcm]

And because of no 14 and no 15, Bill Gate will not sit tight watching the world pass by him :)

[Joerg Weisner]

Hi,

I just went through the list of post on the group writing project.
A lot of your predictions seem to be quite on the spot. It will be interesting to look back in one year from now.

I just postet a link to Your Post on my own blog.

Have a merry christmas and a happy New Year
best wishes from Germany

Jörg

PS: I translated my own post to the group writing project to English, so just in case, You would like to have a look - You are welcome. :-)

[Offshore]

True on your point #10. But you might want to add it is not just for the secrecy, but also for the tax benefits, freedom of speech, and so on. Zentek International http://www.zentek-international.com who offer Offshore Web Hosting, Offshore Servers and Offshore Colocation could help on that one.

And if your prediction is right, it will be a good year.