2010 - The Year in Review

In January we made 10 predictions about how the Internet would change our lives in 2010. In this episode, we look back at the year and report on our predictions.

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Notes

Here were our 10 predictions, with brief comments:

1. (Chris) Internet Politics - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: We'll witness an increasingly political dimension to The Internet as governments grapple with regulation and censorship of the Net. Additionally, we'll see governments and political parties and activists using the Internet for service delivery, campaigning and activism.
   Report: Yes, this all happened; as well as the unexpected huge Wikileaks scandal this month.
2. (Gihan) There'll be an increase in electronic meetings - e.g. teleseminars, webinars, conference calls, on-line conferences - and this will correspond to a significant drop in face-to-face meetings.
   Report: Difficult to say, because the reports are from biased sources. Certainly more on-line meetings now, and more use of on-line technology in face-to-face meetings.
3. (Chris) Less Privacy / Greater Openness: While sites like Facebook and Google are improving the privacy controls they provide to their users, people seem to be increasingly comfortable with sharing information about themselves including embarrassing, even dangerous information.
   Report: No; in fact, it was the opposite, as people discovered just how invasive some of these technologies were.
4. (Gihan) Because we have more Internet-connected phones, we'll see a significant increase in localisation and context-specific content - e.g. a restaurant sending you SMS ads when you walk by.
   Report: No (surprisingly). The technology is available and in use, but just hasn't been adopted widely.
5. (Chris) We'll have more mobile applications.
   Report: Yes, clearly.
6. (Gihan) The growth of Google-based phones will exceed growth of iPhones.
   Report: Yes, Android's growth has been astonishing, and has exceeded iPhone's growth, even in the year of iPhone 4.
7. (Chris) After an annus horribilus in 2009, we'll see the start of a recovery for on-line news media.
   Report: No, news media still haven't figured out a viable on-line business model.
8. (Gihan) Smart businesses will figure out Twitter and Facebook.
   Report: Yes and no. There have been a few outstanding examples (like the Old Spice Guy), but not that many.
9. (Chris) The Pervasive Internet: There'll be an increasing number of clever gadgets being launched that "passively" access the Internet as part of their operation.
   Report: No, although we're seeing more devices use the Cloud for storage.
10. (Gihan) Content syndication - both automatic and manual - will really take off.
    Report: Yes, and it's likely to be increasing even more, as content publishers want to make their stuff available on lots of devices.