In the Year 2006

Many members of the blogosphere have taken a stab at predicting the major happenings in 2006. Like any good conformist, I am going to also give it a shot. Below I have fired off a representative set of 30 techno-centric-ish predictions listed in no particular order. I could probably go for more, but I don’t feel like spending all of 2007 trying to take my foot out of my mouth. Read at your own risk!

1. Yahoo’s stock hits $65
2. Amazon’s stock hits $70
3. Google’s stock drops 20%
4. AOL files to go public and/or is acquired
5. Riya, YouTube, and Facebook are acquired
6. MSFT Vista/Office has less than stellar adoption rates and signals end of the desktop era
7. MSFT creates their own advertising network service to compete with Google
8. Google releases office productivity software/services
9. Google takes a huge step towards providing an "integrated" experience for users
10. Comcast and other tech-giants trial network-centric computing as a subscription service
11. A major social network will open their API and disrupt other “gated” communities
12. Skype downloads top 500M. My father will tell me about VOIP
13. Apple partners with XM and/or Sirius to:
13a. Let you listen to satellite radio from your IPod
13b. Buy music you hear on the radio on-demand
14. The satellite radio firmthat partners with Apple sees 10% increase in stock
15. Wave of heavily funded VC-backed Web 2.0 platform start-ups emerge
16. Advertising revenue associated with “traditional” publications continues to plunge
17. Traditional media giants and private equity investors rush to buy Web properties
18. Major network news anchors will publish blogs for “mom” and “dad”
19. A location-aware mobile service hits the mainstream
20. A multi-modal phone is released that makes it easy to use IP, cell, and other networks
21. Established web “stack” weakens as non-GYM aggregation services gain traction
22. A “Greasemonkey” for the masses emerges
23. Somebody hacks a popular console network to work with a game from another platform
24. Viable business models for remix applications and web services begin to emerge
25. A popular film is released via an on-demand TV, or IP service before a theater
26. Fortune 500 companies factor Web 2.0 into their IT strategies
27. Remix culture goes mainstream as media become increasingly atomized and open
28. Real Semantic Web technologies and services make their way onto the WWW
29. Market research firms popularize a global SOA using Web 2.0, SOA, and SemWeb memes
30. Web 2.0 makes cover of mainstream periodicals as Tim Berners-Lee re-enters the spotlight

technorati tags: 2006, web 2.0, predictions, technology