These trend prediction things are scary I think. I mean how many of them will be egg in the face? 
I was taking a peek at my first post of last year, summarizing possible online trends for 2007, to see where we stand – let me know your thoughts:
- Online will gain ground rapidly – am I imagining it or so much really happened in just one year?
- Marriage of mainstream and blogs – expect more of it this year.
- Experts and thought leaders joining the blogosphere – too little really.
- Aggregators will have an important role to play – expect more of it this year.
- Human intervention to bring out what’s special – Mahalo – people powered search, is gaining ground; social bookmarking has gone mainstream.
Sanjay Trehan, NDTV Convergence had an interesting comment at a panel discussion I moderated recently – a study suggests that usage of organic search actually declined by 6%, on the other hand people finding content directly or through bookmarking went up 4%.
Do you smell Mobile-Internet as the thing to look out for this year? Other than consumption of Internet via the mobile – I think we can expect more mobile friendly sites and blogs – mobile enabled communities might be the thing to watch out for.
I was chatting with Gaurav this morning to plan the next Blog the Talk discussion, which I thought should be around Mobile-Internet aspects covering micro blogging tools likeTwitter; community enablers likeSMS Gupshup etc. and how they will likely impact marketers.
My last meeting of 2007 was with a friend who runs one of the leading mobile marketing companies in India. We spoke about possible threats to the traditional short code business, and also the opportunities that the new environment promises for companies operating in the mobile space.
I am suggesting a publisher friend of mine, who runs a powerful online business community, to consider transitioning their news alerts to Twitter – giving subscribers the choice and control on how/ when to receive/ not receive these alerts – over mobile, web page, GTalk; turn them off/ on between specific hours; connect with other subscribers etc. and do this without the traditional spends on SMS push messaging. It is certainly possible, even though it will take time and committed effort.
What will work towards making these communities successful? Adding value to users, enabling conversations between them. What won’t work? Blatant brand push.
More on our brand obsession with (our) own brands, soon – a very interesting conversation I had with a store manager last Sunday.
BTW – we have a long pending Blog the Talk discussion coming up, this Sunday. In Edition 5 of the series, joining me are, my friends Toby Bloomberg and Dina Mehta as we share perspectives on social media; marketing; research and more. Life comes a full circle, as it was around this time, last year, that Toby first joined me for what’s become one of our best read series.
Do share your thoughts.
