Areas I’m Interested In for 2010
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I have been talking with people a lot lately about the online areas that I’m really interested in following this year, so I decided to share them here, as well. These aren’t necessarily the areas that I think will be the biggest this year. This list is really more about the areas I’m most interested in watching develop. I’ll list the areas in no specific order because it’s hard to say in exactly what order I’m most interested in them.
- URL shorteners: This is an area that I don’t expect much innovation in this year. I’m interested because it is getting so easy to setup your own url shortener, using services like awe.sm that I expect many of the current services to wither because they will be difficult to monetize. And unless a service has a lot of dedicated users, there will be no reason for someone to buy them, when a company can just build their own. So, who will be standing at the end of the year?
- Podcasting: This area is interesting to me because I’ve podcasted for years. I’m interested in seeing the continual evolution of podcasting because I don’t believe it will achieve much growth in its current form. Something has to change to take it to the next level and I’m hoping that change starts this year.
- Live streaming video: While live streaming video on the web has been around for a little while, I think it is just now coming into its own. I’m curious to see if it catches on in a big way this year and if it can become something that non techies will begin to embrace.
- Geolocation based social networks/games: I find these fascinating because people give up so much information about themselves on these services. I personally find them fun to play with as well, but I’m wondering if people sometimes reveal too much information. I’m half afraid to hear a news story this year where that becomes a major issue. The other half of me is excited to see how these services develop and who shoots to the top between foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Yelp (which just entered the fray) or another contender. I’m also interested in seeing if the companies in this space become acquisition targets for other larger social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.
- Microblogging: Twitter has gained so much awareness over the past year, but I’m curious to see how it does this year. Will Facebook copying them impact heavily on their growth? Will mainstream people start to get what Twitter is, but decide that they’re already getting most of those features on Facebook, but with less hassle from spammers?
- Social bookmarking sites: What will become of social bookmarking sites? Will the growth continue or will people stop caring as much about what is popular on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc. in favor of the links that are getting mentioned in Facebook, Twitter, etc. Plus, this feels like an area that could get subsumed into a social network like Facebook, in some way. I wouldn’t put it past Mark Zuckerberg to try to integrate those features, if not necessarily as completely as his company did those of Twitter.
Those are the areas I’m most interested in watching. (At the moment, at least.) What areas are you interested in watching this year? Let me know in the comments below.
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With URL shorteners, it seems like the only service that’s really jumping ahead of the others is bit.ly. I see a lot of people using this service because it can track clicks on your shortened URL’s and I’m pretty sure it also ofers customized URL’s.
I’m enjoying playing around with Foursquare. I was an avid user of Brightkite before, but Foursquare gives me points and badges. Makes it more like a game, which is fun. I see some people going overboard, in my opinion, with their public check-ins. At least a couple people I follow on Twitter are posting when they check in at home, including their exact location. That’s a security risk I’m not willing to take.
I see so many more people using Facebook than Twitter. Even though Twitter has managed to gain a lot of mainstream acceptance in a short period of time, I don’t see it attracting everyone. There’s just something about Facebook that has the attention of more people right now. I think it’s the feature-rick environment; the fact that it’s all right there. To do things like post pictures via Twitter, you need to use an external service like TwitPic. I think people who aren’t interested in the immediacy of Twitter will stay with Facebook only.
I have a delicious.com account and only use it for my own bookmarks. I have a Firefox extension that integrates those bookmarks into my browser, and I like the functionality. I’m not really interested in “social bookmarking.”
I’m also interested to see how live video streaming and podcasting evolve over the year. Like you, I think both of these mediums need something new to give them a push. Just don’t know what that is at this time.