My Top 3 Web 2.0 predictions for 2009

My forecast for the year ahead. And I continue to stick my neck out on one specific prediction...

Happy New Year ZDNet readers! With a plummeting end to a roller coaster 2008 (and I don't enjoy the plummets) it was nice to get away on holiday for three weeks. Which gave me some time to reflect on the year past and make some predictions for the year ahead. Here are my Top 3 -- let me know whether you agree or disagree:

1. Twitter goes mainstream
OK, so the column inch thief of the past month didn't end the year on a great note -- I returned to the UK to read numerous news stories on 30-odd celebrity Twitter accounts being hacked in a very obvious way. And 2008 also saw its fair share of downtime for the service. But in spite of that the Twitter user community grew substantially (at a guess from 3 million to 6 million plus); its biggest fans got hooked; and it has spawned a healthy developer community. Even though no one is yet making any money from it.

But that might not matter. My position on Twitter altered significantly over 2008 (look back through my posts to see me commenting on its possible demise earlier in the year!) and I now wonder if it needs to make money at all. Maybe Twitter is, in fact, a possible new Open Source "transport" upon which vendors could build applications to enable it to be used for specific aims, such as marketing communications, customer support or even, God forbid, mass mailing? Could Twitter be E-mail Lite?

Either way, more and more people are "getting" Twitter and it's a fairly safe bet that those and more will be adding Twitter to their Facebook accounts and blogs to enable quick and easy commenting, as well as other utilisations akin to how we use SMS on mobile phones and used to use IM instead of send e-mails. I also guess that it will continue to reign over any possible competitor -- I just don't see anything challenging its position for a while.

All in all, a good year ahead for Biz Stone and his colleagues!

2. Web 2.0 meets CRM for the perfect business application
I've written on this before so I am not going to regurgitate what you can read in my other posts. Suffice to say that adding "social" elements to Customer Relationship Management makes, in my opinion, the perfect business application.

I am not alone in thinking this, with Salesforce.com now touting a Facebook Connect option for their Force.com platform and SAP, either behind or ahead of SFDC depending on your point of view, investing in LinkedIn.

Visit any website focused towards customer management and CRM and it will be full of talk of CRM 2.0 -- but is anything actually happening? Well, when it comes to practical demonstrations of CRM 2.0 in action, Salesforce.com predictably led the way at their November Dreamforce conference with a presentation showing user forms in Facebook where the data found its way into their CRM system. But it was pretty lame. It can't be hard to mine user data automatically if that user is a "friend" (or has otherwise given permission through membership of a group of fan page)? And what about some practical B2B use, like collecting user comments from Twitter or mining LinkedIn data?

I have little doubt it will come this year and there will be massive kudos to the CRM vendor that lights the path, having mastered the data privacy concerns along the way (and convinced Facebook to share "social graph" data). I am not going to make any guesses as to who will pick up the baton and run with it fastest, other than it won't be Microsoft and Dynamics CRM...

3. The age of the niche Social Network
If 2008 was all about everyones' parents joining Facebook and the word "Twitter" entering everyday language, 2009 will be about the growth of niche Social Networks appealing to specific needs or interests.

Now I have been crowing about niche SocNets for nearly a year and as yet they haven't really taken off. Ask most people if they want to join a network specifically for geneologists, financial advisers, public speakers or sales leads and they'll tell you that they are already on Facebook or LinkedIn and don't need to join any others (in spite of them potentially better serving the needs which saw them networking in the first place). But the interest they have in the specific use of Social Networks that led to them adding applications or joining groups last year will drive growth in stand-alone niche networks focused towards those interests in 2009.

Why the different approach this year? Well we can thank Facebook Connect largely. The main objection to joining networks outside of the mainstream networks to which most people are already members is that it takes time, means yet another password to remember and involves the cumbersome task of building a contact/friend list from scratch. Facebook Connect smashes all of these objections in one go with its ability for one click registration on new sites, using your existing Facebook credentials; plus an ability to bring over your existing contacts to the new network. It even posts back news feed items to Facebook that relate to your activity on the remote networks, so it helps you keep on top of what is happening on each of them in one place.

When the roll out of Facebook Connect starts in earnest, expect niche Social Networks to be perceived as extensions to Facebook, rather than yet another site you need to sign up for.

I'd love you read your thoughts on whether you agree.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz