2009 The Year of the Web… Again and More

Given that in our online poll last month so many of you indicated that you intend to increase expenditures in new media and web development, I’ve compiled a list of 2009 predictions for web design as well as web use that might be useful as you do your planning for those expenditures for the coming year. In addition to the buzzwords you already know like social media, social networking, blogging, twittering, digging, etc. Here are some more to get very well acquainted with as they are becoming the new drivers in the online space – OpenID, Semantic Web, Web apps, cloud computing.

WEB PREDICTIONS FOR 2009
Read Write Web
This blog includes several lists of predictions from RW team members. Here are the top predictions from each:

• iTunes adds social networking features; but it’s still a closed development system.
• Lifestreams will continue to evolve; From the explosion of the newsfeed-powered Facebook to the experimental polling technology of FriendFeed, 2008 was a big year for the “lifestream” – the technology of aggregating data from all your activities on different social networks around the web. No one summed it up better than Mark Krynsky in his Lifestream Blog post The Year in Lifestreaming for 2008. In 2009, I’ll be watching the parties above, but also MovableType’s Motion, social media ping server Gnip, Strands on the iPhone and Chris Messina and friends’ new working group on Activity Streams.
• Twitter announces they have a plan to make money. They do.
• VCs jump onto the SAAS bandwagon, but most ventures don’t need the cash.
• Digg still won’t be bought.
• Google loses goodwill, Yahoo gains.
• Twitter will be acquired (probably by Facebook–but multiple suitors will compete for the deal).
• Twitter is going to continue to grow and eventually get acquired, while Facebook is going to see further decline.
• With the economy continuing to tank, Microsoft will double-down on its Facebook investment, garnering more control of the company – and more access to the data being gathered through Facebook Connect.

Matthew Buckland
Matthew’s top three predications are:

• Publishing & e-commerce sites as social networks: All major sites will have social network layers allowing users to connect to each other, facilitating peer recommendation of content and sharing of content. The New York Times is leading the way with their recently launched TimesPeople which does just this. Viral functionality like “Send to a friend/email a friend” will make way for more sophisticated sharing that involve mining email contact lists.
• Niche social networks: Expect a raft of niche social networks and exclusive networks to launch. There will be some big launches too: Apple will launch a social network, akin to Facebook, but initially mobile driven from the iPhone. With its scalability issues under control, Twitter will jack up its rather thin offering, with an improved user interface and more social networking features.
• Applications continue moving online: 2009 may be a seminal year for this trend. We’ve seen how Google launched Google docs, an online version of Microsoft Word and Excel. It was a direct lunge at Microsoft’s jugular. Microsoft, which is like a dangerous mangy dog, will respond by launching its own online versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint to take Google head-on. Microsoft may go a step further and turn Outlook into an online social network, arguably where email and contacts are headed anyway. Google will strike by announcing an online operating system, Windows, linked to a new GooglePC, a strike at the very heart of Microsoft. We may see activity happening the other way too, with Facebook launching a browser.

Read all of Matthew’s predictions.

Website Magazine
The magazine leads with the following prediction:

A Major Social Media Shift: There will be a noticeable, albeit slight uptick in social media usage (using weblogs and leveraging online networking sites, for instance) due to increased and continued layoffs across all business sectors. Few small enterprises, however, will effectively master social media, despite claims that it’s possible. Genuine creativity and original thought will have their time in the social spotlight, for sure, but those instances will be few and far between and overshadowed by massive social media campaigns initiated by those with the biggest budgets and resources. A serious backlash at communities like Digg and other social media sites might occur as messages from the less connected are drowned out. This may create an opportunity for social micro-networks to establish more active communities or move to where their voices can more clearly be heard. Should things get worse for the economy as a whole, many social sites will attempt – ultimately in vain – to charge their communities for participation. This will lead to major social media shifts, such as more robust niche communities or participants abandoning social networking altogether.

Read the full article.

Robin Good
Report from Robin: “… I will analyze for my 2009 predictions which I have divided into two parts. Part 1, the one you are reading now, which is devoted to online publishing, marketing and advertising, video and net television, digital imaging, visual communication and site design, and Part 2, tomorrow, dedicated instead to social networks and social media, identity, future events strategy, learning, education, online collaboration.” Read more from Robin.

Sarah Bray, Creative Director, S. Joy Studios

Smiley Cat Web Design Blog
Smiley Cat “Designer Christian Watson” has the following top predictions about the Web design space. Read the entire blog.

• Hand drawn web sites: Hand drawn will continue to remain a popular web design style through much of 2009, but will start to die off later in the year as designers start to see it as being very ‘2008.’
• Mobile web design: Mobile web use will still be a small percentage for most web sites. However, it will continue to grow and highly trafficked web sites will be expected to have an ‘iPhone version.’ Web designers who wish to remain on the cutting edge will enable their sites for mobile use by creating streamlined versions for mobile devices, even those these devices will increasingly have fully functional web browsers.
• Social media: In 2009 it won’t be enough to simply create a web site for a client. Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product. They will also be required to set up ways to automatically distribute content to and from this network of sites as well.