2009 Predictions

Here's a listing of 2009 of predictions from our readers - enjoy

2009 PREDICTIONS

Dan aka @floozyspeak, Lextant

1. Apple makes a netbook, comes out with a new iphone with built in compass and other cool stuff

2. DOW takes a fall on more woes but the Obama promise rings the cattle call, hits 11k by years end

3. I will buy a house, get married, redo my blog, and lose 60 pounds

4. crowdsourcing takes off, JoeMetric wows many and rocks the planet

5. brand monitoring/social media insight and data mining continues to boom but real understanding of what it all means is lacking

6. Yahoo gets bought at $18 a share by Nokia

7. location based services becomes the new wild wild west for advertising, and it fails without understanding what consumers want first

8. Google buys New York Times and begins implementing heavy usage of QR codes in print advertising

9. 20-40 notable web 2.0 startups get the pinch as VC dries up and revenue models on advertising alone fizzle out

10. Battlestar Galactica spurs fans with seriously ridiculous plot twist.. everyone is a cylon

Alvin aka @wyliemac, the270.com

1. The Columbus startup community will grow and flourish, and will be a model for other communities to follow.

2. Not everyone will get it.

3. The angel's and VC's in Columbus will get more active with the community.

4. I will get into the Innovation Awards ceremony, some way, some how. Otherwise, you will hear me gripe.

5. Ignite Columbus will rock with thought provoking and irrelevant speakers. We will have to turn people away because otherwise, the Fire Marshall will shut us down.

6. Oh, and while I'm at it, Wordcamp Columbus will rock.

7. Twitter will find a monetization model. People will gripe. But in the end, they'll be willing to pay.

8. Columbus main street media will redouble their social media efforts, and will see the value of sponsoring events (such as Wordcamp Columbus).

9. Tim Eby will miss Columbus. (Yes Jody, Tim is moving to St. Louis to take the GM position of the public radio station there. Oh, and more importantly, Columbus will miss Tim.)

10. People will continue to hate me because I root for Michigan, and I won't care.

Jody Dzuranin @jodyNcolumbus www.jodydzuranin.com

1. US BROADBAND COALITION and the Ohio Broadband Council will make 'public' wireless connectivity the norm versus the anomaly and I will actually quit bitching about it.

2. Google Health will be accessible through the Google Android devices and will put the people back in charge of our own Health information.

3. Wyliemac's #7: Twitter will sell the app to groups and companies and still be free for individuals.

4. Wyliemac's #9: Where is Tim Eby going? Nooooo!

5. 'Unreal' list of shovel ready IT projects designed to jump start innovation and the economy to present to Mayor Coleman for Columbus and Governor Strickland for Ohio. (*Unreal, the much overused adjective in the Sam Bradford Heisman acceptance speech) Projects: Reorganize the electric grid, upgrade broadband penetration and bandwidth (wireless too).

(I realize I am not following rules here - so what else is new?)

Dave aka @dave225

1. Columbus TechLife will continue to grow and communities of specific interest will organize.
2. We will create a wiki page to list the tags that represent communities and interests.
3. Everyone will grow tired of the term "Social Media".
4. Overall, 1% will contribute content, 90% will consume it and 9% will be unengaged.
5. The demand for aggregation of relevant and trustworthy content will become more important.
6. I will learn how to parse 1000's of Tweets into Useful, Interesting and Ignore.
7. 2009 will be a year of learning and preparation for 2010 - the year of intense innovation.
8. Top 10 lists will stop at 8 because we have a lot of other things to do.

Chris aka @canderson

1. Year of Web Pro.fit (Pro = quality solutions & fit = healthy business model) marking end 2.0 talk. RIA fuels it.

2. 2. Toobla puts Columbus on the map for Web startups. Million users by year end.

3. 3. Google releases a Gaming platform to covertly overtake the game advertising model with targeted ads.

4. 4. Android starts to get traction paving the way for beating the app store in 2010.

5. 5. At my 10 year reunion I get drunk and shout “There is no such thing as the real world just a lie you have to rise above.” …As I bust through the double doors.

6. 6. Yahoo has at least two acquisition talks with suitors who all pass because Yahoo is too old to be attractive.

7. 7. Twitter becomes a news feed and rev model includes (premium model - ads, free model with text hyperlink ads and, pay per tweet model for business.

8. 8. Craigslist fails to ad features (still) and Kijiji eclipses them in traffic.

9. 9. President Obama plays at least one NBA star one on one and losses. LBJ?

10. 10. HDTV conversion causes Y2K like scare and news blows it out of proportion.

Andrew Spott - @aspott

1. The Economy will bottom out when Q4 earnings/profit reports are released

2. Obama will have at least 1 serious assasination attempt made on him before or on January 20th. (I hate to predict this, I hope it doesn't happen)

3. A Middle Eastern Nation will attack Israel within 90 days of Obama taking office.

4. Microsoft will end up buying Yahoo

5. Twitter will decentralize and monetize by licensing "hubs" to the big internet companies (Facebook, etc) and Companies alike.

6. Alternative Energy Bio-Fuel Industry growth will force food costs to all new highs

7. YouTube/Google will release a set-top box very similar to that of Vudu, that finally realizes the vision of WebTV (a product many years before its time)

8. Wal-Mart will knock out a slew of competitors and be slapped with a precident-setting class-action lawsuit for Anti-Competitive behaviors.

9. Unions will start to become a thing of the past as a democrat controlled White House and Congress pass new labor laws similar to those in Europe (specifically - France)

10. Columbus will start to be grouped with other tech cities such as Denver, San Francisco, etc

Sandy & Ben Blanquera @sblanquera & @bblanquera on the lighter side...

1. An all-in-one twitter tool will evolve with ability to search, follow, quit, tweet now, auto respond and schedule tweets in one fabulous place.
2. There will be a tweetup UFC match @ Columbus State between @nickseguin and @mikefigliuolo with @mikebowers as the ring master.
3. The many groups in the technology sector will come together for a technology summit making greater things possible for Columbus.
4. After meeting on Match.com, someone will host a tweetup wedding. All invitations delivered via Twitter.
5. Start-up weekend 2 will spawn 10 new companies.
6. Twittering members of OWL will rename themelves “twowl”.
7. More than one co-working space will evolve around town.
8. Someone, somewhere in the world will name their child tweet.
9. There will be more than 100 meetups for Columbus TechLife in 2009.
10. @wyliemac, @bblanquera, @raybohac, @mikebowers, and @chiefgadd will all twitter while they run this year’s half marathon.

Brian aka @1datarecovery at Assist Data Recovery

1. A Twitter alarm clock will be invented that sends out a tweet telling everyone that you just woke up.

2. GM, Ford and Chrysler will all form new business models making cars that replace OnStar with OnTwitter.

3. @jodyNcolumbus will create the "UnHealthy Blog" for all the peeps that got unhealthy drinking at the 100 Cbus MeetUps in 2009.

4.@bblanquera and @sblanquera will launch a new business to invest in MeetUp groups.

5. Someone will create a piece of software that automatically posts all of the Cbus events to all of the social networking sites automatically, but a bug causes each post to have a different event date / time and location.

6. @8101harris will get a new job as a Wal-mart Greeter where he will Twitter about each customer as they enter the store. He will then be promoted to Chief Santa Claus.

7. Yahoo and Microsoft will both launch Twitter clones, but neither one will work unless you login every time you send a new message.

8. Microsoft will patch IE with a set of security updates that will only work if you are on Service Pack 14, but Service Pack 14 never gets released.

9. Apple will release a new computer with a uni-core processor called the Apple Core. Or will it be the Apple iCore?

10. Google will buy Twitter for an undisclosed amount of cash, stock and GooglePlex massage therapists for the acquired Twitter staff.

JC aka @jquaglia

1. The momentous shift will continue away from old media to new media. 2009 will become known as the beginning of the end for television/cable as we know it.

2. The Nasdaq will be come to be known as the new Dow in level of importance to the health of our economy.

3. Generation Y will begin to fully embrace our "mission," which will include innovation in energy alternatives, urban development, and political reform. This will be the catalyst of the next great America. Based not on our industrial power and natural resources, but on our belief that "we can do whatever we want to do when we grow up" because our mothers have told us so since birth.

4. Twitter will make the AP news wire near obsolete.

5. Although personal blogs will still grow like wildfire, serious and established bloggers will continue to consolidate and team up to produce more and better content in centralized locations.

6. Cbus will realize that we have been spared the slaughter of much of mortgage crisis because our real estate market is owned by people who own one home and live in it rather than those places where vacation homes exist that have been financed with ARMs. Can you tell I'm an optimist?

7. Facebook will further struggle to monetize and will begin to fizzle out as a trend in the wake of Twitter and other, more addictive and useful social media tools.

8. The stock market will not do much of anything in 2009 other than realize the Dow is increasingly obsolete. Economic direction will come from private finance.

9. Amtrak will announce it is exploring returning to Columbus and other cities after increased govt subsidies and investment from people like Warren Buffet.

10. Why did you have to make this a top 10 list? In 2009, I predict this list will only be the top 5.

misterbarnes aka http://twitter.com/misterbarnes - I am an alchemist on planet earth

1. The cloud will become more understandable and more greatly accepted....seriously.

2. Touch screen website design will be the cottongin of 2009.

3. Web 2.0 will be soooo Web 2.0 as 3.0 moves from embryo to zygote.

4. There will be a reconfiguration and consolidation of information consumption forcing end-users to spend more time outdoors, with family, and lending a hand.

5. Artificial intelligence will begin making a recognizable impact.

6. Software as a Service will become more biggerer.

7. Emails will start to seem as archaic as carrier pigeons.

8. All devices and personal technology will coexist and communicate even more quickliererer.

9. Symantec searches will cut down on useless time spent swimming in the vast ocean of specific term searches.

10. Collective intelligence will become more widespread and ever more monitored.

2009 promises to be a huge year for innovation and tech growth.

Viva le cloud!!!

Mike Gray aka @mikergray

1. Cloud services will be used as a drop spot for hiding and trading information by those with nefarious purposes (terrorists, warez, etc.)
2. Apple will not release a NetBook or a tablet.
3. SSDs will continue to drop in price and by the end of the year will be out-shipping laptops with non-SSD hard drives.
4. Large tech companies will go on a shopping spree, picking up smaller tech companies that have become undervalued due to the economic recession. 2009 is the year of the acquisition.
5. Windows 7 will ship this year.
6. Baseball in Columbus will be huge with the opening of the new park in the Arena District.
7. Buying major index stocks on Jan. 1, 2009 will yield positive returns by Dec. 31, 2009.
8. People will be overloaded with information and status updates and we will not find an answer for managing the problem until 2010.
9. People will continue thanking individual followers and posting "good morning" tweets. ugh.
10. An as-yet unreleased Twitter client will gain significant popularity and overtake the likes of Twhirl, TweetDeck, and Twitteriffic.

Rick Coplin aka http://twitter.com/RickCoplin and http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickcoplin

1. The US economy will sputter throughout 2009 and the turmoil will spell opportunity for creative, forward thinkers.
2. US auto companies and suppliers suffer throughout 2009. Ford will remain the strongest of the big three.
3. Central Ohio startup activity will increase during 2009, and funding opportunities will expand.
4. A few Central Ohio startups will begin to make it big.
5. StartUp Weekend Cbus 2,0 will be attended by 200 people making it the largest in the nation two years running.
6. Mobilization and instant access to media and information will continue to grow in importance and influence.
7. Social media will continue its expansion into everyday life and become the primary source of information, news and business innovation communication.
8. Green Initiatives and Technologies will grow in importance and acceptance.
9. The Soviet military will step up global activity and test the new administration’s resolve, and threats to freedom and national security will abound.
10. Less than half of my predictions will be accurate at the end of 2009.

Expanded comments can be found on my blog at http://rickcoplin.blogspot.com/