Techy predictions

Facebook boom - Facebook branching out again, the obvious being blog's and better messaging facility. Possibly they could improve the email and give the ability to have folders and filters. Facebook connect will take off with the more geeky people.
Myspace music - To become a major site in its own right. Pushing new talents, unsigned talents will have a standard platform to compete with major artists. Social web power or great marketing power?
Mobile web - with the raise of mobile internet or mobile broadband as companies wrongly name it, I can see the improved technology only boosting the amount of mobile internet users. Websites such as facebook have done extremely well with m.facebook.com, I can see many more rolling out mobile websites. Social sites and web 2.0 leading the way.
Widgets and web apps - The amount of widgets to reduce dramatically, less money, less time, less rubbish to be released - a good thing IMHO
Yahoo - an actual sale, Microsoft could eventually buy out.
Open ID - must have this year, think of how many log in and passwords you have. Will become standard
Film screening/buying/renting online - With the popularity of downloading music from mp3.amazon.co.uk and the popularity of tv shows and movie downloads from apple, I can see more films being rented/brought or screen online. Could become a great way of promotions and embedding adverts.
Twitter - Power of twitter to expand, being able to track conversations/tweets will be implemented (have to bow to public pressure) The only worry is twitter will be flooded with mindless old skool marketing types who will abuse the power of twitter (Twitter spam!)
Clones - As the more popular social sites grow and the less popular go into the deadpool, the more likely it is for copycats and clones to be released. Some will improve, others will simply damage the market. 2009 will be the attack of the clones (clones wars)
Ajax - will become more and more popular. It will definitely over take older coding styles and make the web more visually attractive and clearly improve user experience.
More Google handsets - G2 aka cupcake will be released and will sell a few. Can't ever see it being mainstream but can see a few more Google phones with students and geeks. Android to be rolled out to a number of handsets, still too early to tell whether it will take off.
Web Browsers - set to become a huge talking point across the online world. MS Internet Explorer have to set up their game, otherwise market share will drop massively. Firefox and Google's Chrome have really come into their own this year, Modzilla's relationship with Google maybe stretched but will only spur the original alternative provider to step their game up. IE 8 has had a real beating lately, no rush job this time. I can also see Facebook officially partnering with a particular browser provider to release a dedicated browser. Wouldn't suprise me either if Google wrap up social/friend search/internal facebook search and web search on facebook, taking over from the lackluster microsoft search and sneaking out a facebook branded Chrome.


Danny Denhard