1) Both major UK political
parties will utterly/tragically miss the boat with online/social media. The signs are there – bad websites, minimal social media
presence and old-school monologue and press pictures = goodbye connected
voters. Disappointing. Neither party has more than 20k
fans. Missed opportunity is
putting it mildly. Granted neither
camp is offering the media darling Obama was but seriously guys… build those
networks before you need them.
2) Tablet wars
will erupt
and present us a whole new way to consume news and information. My bet is on pretty and expensive – it’ll
be Apple for the win at least at the beginning. E-readers will continue to see an initial surge in sales but
once tablets come out this will dissipate.
3) MySpace will
solidify their music offering and position itself as a as THE music portal although
traffic will continue south as Hulu and others converge and offer more
choice/sharing functionality.
4) Twitter will reactivate
growth with new features and main uses will become more defined. News will remain big and more scandals will be exposed and
reported before mainstream media.
Competitive depositioning may see a rise with the deals with Google, Facebook
etc.
5) Facebook will
break the 500 million users mark by end of year and ramp-up their current currency offering to
create an even deeper economy inside the behemoth. Sale by early 2011.
6) Traditional
media will
continue to decline but at a slower rate.
7) Opt-out will be the word du jour as location-based anything will be THE
thing of 2010 until people have a negative experience.
8) Brands and
organisations will continue to shout at consumers. Those that enable and add value will see massive returns.
9) iPhone use in the UK will initially
explode with the addition of the other carriers, but as the hype cycle dissipates
other devices will see interest as mainstream becomes “uncool”, which is when Apple will roll out a new version!
10) With the
introduction of real-time results getting precedence on the Google results page
– monitoring and brand reputation management services will see a dramatic spike in 2010. It’s use it or lose it time. Ask Eurostar employees
for more information.
BONUS! Augmented
reality will
continue to make the publics eyes glaze over until at least the second half of
the year.
