| LED Digest 2319: Special Issue - Predictions! |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. January 5, 2007 Issue no. 2319 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ The Oracle of Edwin --== 2006 Review / Scoring of Predictions ==-- ~ Edwin Hayward "I guess I should have stayed in bed last year, as my crystal ball turned up a miserable 47% accuracy." --== 2007 Predictions ==-- ~ Edwin Hayward "The 'hot' issue (pun intended) for 2007 will be global warming." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> I got this message from Viggie Bala (http://www.viggie.com) today: ------------------ Just wondering whatever happened to Edwin Hayward. Haven't heard from him after his 2006 Predictions: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/443/54/. The predictions and review of last year was part of LED for long. Looking forward to a review of 2006 and a new set of predictions for 2007. It's that time of the year. :) ------------------ It certainly is! I've been waiting for a Friday to publish this -- so today is a special issue devoted to the Oracle of Edwin. Hope you enjoy these - comments and predictions of your own are appreciated. Can you believe he's been doing these since 1999? That's a tradition, man. Have a great weekend, Adam ----------------- From: Edwin Hayward Subject: 2006 Review, 2007 Predictions... It's the New Year, and as well as good cheer and broken resolutions, that also means predictions. I've been running 10 predictions a year since 1999 and it seems a shame to break that streak. Quick summary: I scored 67% in 2005, 77% in 2004, 65% in 2003, 85% in 2002, 67% in 2001, 80% in 2000 and 63.5% in 1999 for an average of 72%. Hey, I'm ahead of a random coin toss! Let's see just how badly I hurt that average with last year's predictions... ========================================== REVIEW OF PREDICTIONS FOR 2006 1. IDN domain names hit the radar screen with a bang, thanks partly to IE7's built in support for them. (IDN domain names are domains containing native language characters e.g. Chinese or Japanese, etc.) rather than a transliteration of them. - This is still "in progress", thanks mainly to Microsoft's foot-dragging on the IE7 auto updates. There were signs of life as the calendar changed, with several players in the IDN field reporting that the (still relatively small) amount of traffic hitting their domains doubled from September to December. Watch this space. ACCURACY: 4/10 2. RSS feeds go mainstream and disappear - many large sites offer them, but users are able to subscribe automatically without really being conscious of what an "RSS feed" is since the software to do so gets much better. - Close, but we're not there yet. Again, IE7's delayed roll-out put a damper on this. On the other hand, we've certainly come a long way in the last 12 months - RSS isn't just another TLA any more. ACCURACY: 6/10 3. The Google / AOL deal is only the first step on a slippery slope towards greater ad clutter in the search results. - The slippery slope is shallow, but it's tilted inexorably downwards. Google has started to integrate ads for other Google properties at the top of "relevant" results (try googling "yahoo calendar" for a first-hand glimpse) and there are more ads in Google Local and other sites. ACCURACY: 8/10 4. The problem of spam is seen to be receding (a battle which is basically won, though "legitimate" email marketers may get hurt in the crossfire ) - That was so far off-target it didn't even leave a mark. Spam was worse this year than it's ever been, whether email spam, discussion forum spam or splog and blog comment spam. ACCURACY: 0/10 5. Local search players start to mix online and offline giving business advertisers a hybrid way of reaching their audience - None of the major players have done this yet, though smarter smaller companies have been seen to make overtures in that direction. ACCURACY: 2/10 6. Rolling the dice again, at least one of the following behemoths will be acquired / merge (though not necessarily by or with each other): Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Google. - I'm riding this losing horse right into the ground. Didn't happen. ACCURACY: 0/10 7. On a worldwide basis, XBox 2 will bomb while the Playstation 3 will be red hot - If Microsoft dropped the ball on IE7 and Vista, Sony punctured the ball on PS3. Next year may be different, but this Christmas all eyes seemed to be on the little Wii console. On the other hand, XBox 2 hasn't exactly taken the world by storm either. Right loser, wrong winner. ACCURACY: 4/10 8. The movie box office will decline again from this year, as the industry permanently shifts to new modes of behaviour (e.g. DVD releases brought forward to almost parallel theatre releases) - It's close and with few major hits this year that's hardly a surprise. VOD had a good year, and it's clearly a trend that's here to stay. ACCURACY: 8/10 9. Cameras built into cellphones will be "good enough" to start eating away at the overall digital camera market. - My new cellphone, purchased in November, includes a 5M pixel camera with 3x optical zoom. While it's still outclassed in poor light, in daylight it produces results practically identical to a "standard" digital camera. Moore's law will take care of the rest. ACCURACY: 8/10 10. Old blogs will be abandoned faster than new blogs are started, as the blogging industry moves towards a more businesslike footing and away from the hobby diarist phase. - According to Technorati's latest report on the blog world (November 2006) new blogs continue to be created at a rapid rate, but the overall daily volume of posts (across all blogs) seems to have pretty much levelled off. That can only mean that people are posting less to older blogs. It's also worth noting that with 57 million blogs tracked, Technorati only detects about 1.3 million new posts per day, meaning that an average blog is only being updated once a month. That's not exactly "lively". ACCURACY: 7/10 I guess I should have stayed in bed last year, as my crystal ball turned up a miserable 47% accuracy. Obscured by fog from the melting icecaps, perhaps? Let's see if I can get back on track in 2007... ========================================== PREDICTIONS FOR 2007 1. The "hot" issue (pun intended) for 2007 will be global warming. By the end of the year, the clamour will be deafening. 2. By the end of 2007, there still won't be a "viable" alternative to the iPod. 3. Yahoo! will finally "get it" and put a bullet in the ridiculous "editorial oversight" of ad campaigns run through Yahoo! Search Marketing, enabling it to claw back some ground on the Google behemoth. 4. Gmail will come out of beta 5. By the end of the year, Microsoft will have got it right at last, and IDNs (internationalized domain names) will be a hot topic in non-English markets. 6. There will be continued consolidation in the domain name industry, with major holdings being sold to investment funds and other entities intent in "rolling up" hundreds of thousands or millions of domains into mega-portfolios. Some of the deals will hit the headlines at 8 to 9 figures. 7. Microsoft will get its contextual ad offering off the ground and out of beta before year-end, leaving marketers with 3 major search engines to focus on. 8. The open source search engine being built by the Wikipedia founder and his team will still only have a tiny fraction of the search market. It may well give *better* results, but in practical terms few people will have heard of it by year-end. 9. YouTube and Google Video will merge - which name gets retained is guesswork at best, but I'd have to go with the latter. 10. LCD TVs will be THE shopping item of 2007, but by the end of the year more exotic technologies will begin eating into the higher end of the market. Tune in at the same time next year to see how things turned out. Edwin Hayward ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "... it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery |
