Here it is at last. My 10 predictions for the coming year. While my big predictions post is my 5 predictions for the next 5 years, I always try to balance it out with 10 very specific prediction for the coming year. These are usually more wildly, speculatively, wishful than they are serious so I tend not to score as well, but I have fun with them none-the-less.
If you want to see my past posts, here’s a quick rundown by year:
2010
Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years in Business Social Media [2010 Edition]
Top 10 2010 Social Media Predictions
2010 Social Media Prediction Report Card
2011
Top 5 Predictions For The Next 5 Years [2011 Edition]
Yet Another 10 Social Media and Tech Predictions for 2011
2011 Social Media Predictions Report Card
2012
Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years [2012 Edition]
Top 10 (Outlandish) Social Media Business Predictions for 2012
Normally I lead off with my prediction that Facebook will go public this year but since that’s pretty much a sure thing, I’m excluding that from this years list. This year, I’ve also decided to go really way out there, so hang on.
1 – Twitter is acquired by Yahoo!
This is just crazy stupid but it actually makes sense (at least as much sense as anything else that happens out there). Yahoo is a big media company. Twitter is the future/now of media. If Yahoo bought Twitter and left them alone, much the way they did with Flickr, or, even better yet, put them in charge of Yahoo’s growth strategy, there’s a lot of potential synergy.
2 – The top three smart phones by the end of the year will be an Android Samsung, iPhone 4S, and Nokia Windows Phone, in that order.
Samsung is killing it with Android and I believe is on target to pass the iPhone as leading smart phone, but I also believe this will be a really strong year for Nokia’s WP7. (Full disclosure, Microsoft, Windows Phone is a client and my employer does work for several different handset and telecom companies around the globe.)
3 – Social Media Analytics Backlash
For all the growth in social media analytics and as important as I do believe it is, I think we’ll see a backlash against social media analytics and measurement. I think both consumer privacy concerns as well as the cost implementation will drive this. If you’re at a smaller company, the truth is that sophisticated social media analysis might not be worth the effort and the cost to calculate. At least not until the tools get more sophisticated and integrated with other enterprise tools.
4 – Facebook rolls out a major update to their search function.
Facebook onsite search sucks. It’s dreadful really. You get better results from the Bing partnership, which points you off Facebook, even when you’re looking for pages within Facebook. With all the content their absorbing in the form of links from news sites, I believe they’ll get serious about search this year. (Full disclosure, Bing is a client.)
5 -Google+ new user growth goes flat.
Google+ has a place in the market but I believe it will be a distant 3rd in the market. I think they have almost reached saturation with the über geeky, early adopter set that were drawn to FriendFeed and like the same functionality you see in Google+ but I think their active new user growth will flatten even while their usage from that crowd continues to grow.
6 – Hootsuite Gets acquired by large enterprise software company.
Hootsuite is killing it. They’re growing like crazy, haven’t raised hardly any money and I predict Oracle, SAP or other large enterprise company acquires them as a way to catch up to the work that IBM has been doing. Alternatively we could see Seesmic sold for a bargain. (I think Loic is desperate to sell and move on.)
7 – Automatic (makers of WordPress) IPO
Automatic has built up a huge company with several acquisitions, some huge media company, clients and I think this is the year they go public.
8 – LinkedIn acquires Yammer
I’m cheating on this one a little because I already speculated that LinkedIn should acquire Yammer and Yammer getting acquired was one of last years predictions. But if we’re being outlandish, I had to include it again.
9 – Brick and mortal roll up
A private equity firm comes in and purchases Barnes and Noble and struggling Best Buy. They consolidate they two retail experiences with B&N mini stores inside Best Buy stores or expanded tech departments inside B&N stores. Not exactly social media, but partly a consequence of the rise of social media.
10 -Zynga releases an API and an enterprise gamification app.
I don’t even totally know what that means but I had to include something about gamification and I was running out of crazy ideas this morning. Maybe as a backup, they’ll settle for launching some games on LinkedIn – OfficeVille anyone?
Alright there you go. WHat do you think? Any of these have even the slightest chance of happening?
