New Comm Biz

Image via WikipediaI don’t know why, but we just love predictions. They are almost always wrong but that doesn’t stop us. I guess it’s a good way to try and make us feel more secure in an insecure environment. Or for some of us it’s a way to try and figure out what’s next and how can we capitalize on it.

There are few people I take seriously when it comes to predictions (myself included) but John Battelle is always someone I pay special attention to, even if I don’t agree with him on everything. Not only is John a thought leader in this space, he’s a pioneer and a serial entrepreneur.

Predictions 2009 – John Battelle’s Searchblog

I won’t go through all of John’s prediction but I did want to note a few:

1- We’ll see an end to the recession, taken literally, by Q4 09. In other words, the economy will begin to grow again by the end of the year, but it won’t feel like we’re out of the woods till next year at the earliest.

I couldn’t disagree with John more on this one. I think we have a long 5-7 years ahead of us. The real danger here is that if we see even a mild uptick after a year or two I’m afraid people will want to believe so badly that we’re out of the woods that they’ll act irrationally and start spending like it’s 2007 all over again. But to be fair I’m a complete pessimist on the time frame of our macro recovery but a total optimist on entrepreneurialism.

2- The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year’s end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend.

I’m starting to lean in this direction. A few months ago I thought online would be a nuclear winter. I think that advertising over all will be that or worse but I think that online will grow in the single digits. But honestly, even staying flat is a big win.

3- Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes. I sense this will happen for a number of reasons (yeah yeah), but I think the main one will be brand related – a brand based on being cooler than the other guy simply does not scale past a certain point. I sense Apple has hit that point.

And the angels sing Hallelujah!! On this point I couldn’t agree more. Apple has had a nice run. I love Apple products (mostly just the iPod line, although I have a growing distaste for iTunes), I’m thankful to Apple for reminding the world what great design is but I don’t think Apple, their brand and their die hard design requirements can scale to a Wal-Mart world. I think their inability to play in the netbook space will hurt them harder than they realize and I think the other electronics makers are catching up in design.

4- Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with “social media.” They will take budget reserved for media spending (IE buying banners and building out branding campaigns) and start to become publishers in their own right.

Again, I couldn’t agree more, but of course me and my dead-pooled BlueLine cohorts were calling this “Be Your Own Media” 3-4 years ago. This is one reason why I’m starting to believ that online advertising will at least stay flat, if not continue to grow.

4.5- but given the plastic and social nature of online media, many marketers will see these efforts fail, in particular when the efforts are executed in partnership with major media companies. The reason has to do with putting the cart before the horse: in order to truly succeed in conversational media, the company must itself be fluent in that conversation.

I think 09 will see a lot of social media failures, but it will also see it’s first few real social media validation points and these will be enough to carry us into 2010 where we’ll really hit our stride.

John has many other predictions worth checking out, esp around search and specific tech giant mergers.

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