Continuing my yearly prognostications for the coming year.
Link to my top two websites in 2007
My 2008 favorite websites and predictions for 2009
Favorite websites of 2009
These three sites have continued to change and add new and cool things. People keep waiting for the next shiny toy but there really haven’t been that many lately. I added YouTube to the list this year because they are doing some cool things and Netflix/Hulu because they sound the sweet bell of liberty from cable television.
In 2010 it will be: Local Content, HD video (again) and Facebook (again).
The reason this years prediction is similar to last is because the economy took a nosedive and IMHO there weren’t as many innovations as companies hunkered down, improved their services and hoped for better times ahead.Think back to the old days of the internet when blinky text and midi files playing music wasn’t annoying, rather it was considered to be edgy and cool. Think back to the first big name companies to start putting their web URL in advertising. I remember the first time I saw Cheerios.com during breakfast. That afternoon I visited the site and it wasn’t that great so I left and went to one of those blinky text sites.
It is the nature of people to crave information but once they can’t get their minds around it they move on to a smaller subset of information.
In the old days of the internet there weren’t a lot of websites so it didn’t matter if the site was crappy. Now there is an infinite amount and if it’s crappy you just move on to a less crappy site. The same will happen with video, video online is going nuts but with the glut of video people will start only watching higher quality video and the only way to automatically separate out poor quality video is by size. The content will still wildly vary but the HD video will be on the top of the pile.
The same goes for websites in general, local information and local websites are much more important than other websites. This is not because the content is better, it is because it’s an easy way for people to think. Also with the deluge of GPS enabled devices you will start seeing people really trying to tie GPS into their websites, webapps, iphone apps but it really won’t catch on for a few more years. The reason it won’t take off is most people over the age of 25 will be afraid and raise “privacy concerns”. But once the next generation (which doesn’t have any privacy concerns) comes along GPS will be in everything.
Smart websites realize this so as they grow they increase the number of subsets to their information.
Facebook in continually adding ways to prioritize and segment the information you see when you log in, friend lists are merely a way for your mind to not get completely overwhelmed every time you login. They also do this with the applications.
Twitter is doing the same thing with lists but it’s only a small way of dealing with the information overload and facebook will beat twitter in the end.
As more and more people jump into the pool you have to find a way to put blinders on them so they don’t leave.
Because of this phenomenon I believe the trends in 2010 will be Local Content, HD Video and Facebook.
Thoughts?
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