With half of 2006 behind us and think week well underway, I thought this would be a good time to check in on each of the trends I wrote about last year and to assign each a progress report.
Trend I: Comment Search (Grade: B-)
In December I complained that every single blog search engine is missing out on the next great opportunity - comment search. The three big existing blog search contenders - Blogpulse, T'Rati and Google - and newcomers like Sphere and Ask continue to pile on the features for searching blogs, but still lack any capability to mine blog comments.
The one bright spot is coComment, which launched in February. Although it requires work on the commenter's part to enroll, I like coComment. They have been innovating since their launch with multi-language capabilities, social networking features and more. Plus, they know comment search is their ball to grab. I would bet on coComment to add search to at least all of the comments it is aggregating by year's end.
Trend II: Social Commerce (Grade: A-)
Social commerce is basically utilizing the power of many to help us find and buy products and services. It involves the creation of new collaboration technologies that shrink the research and purchasing cycle.
Since the beginning of the year we have seen lots of activity in this category. For example, there's Edgeio, which organizes listings published on RSS enabled websites like blogs and makes them searchable. BloggerKit helps bloggers insert contextually relevant products from Amazon. While, Pepperjam can be used to find, buy and blog about products and services. Of course, let's not forget Shopwiki, Google Base + Google Checkout and eBay's blogs. Later this year I would expect Yahoo to answer by embedding commerce inside Yahoo Answers.
Trend III: RSS Inside (Grade: F)
Here I predicted that this year feed reading would become even easier than it is now, because RSS will be bolted inside all kinds of connected devices and that all kinds of new information will find its way into feeds, not just news and blogs. I also hoped that RSS - as a popular term - would actually begin to fade.
We're basically nowhere here. Yes, there are lots of new uses for RSS. However, getting started with feeds is still just as hard today as it was at year-end 2005.
Trend IV: The Talent Crunch (Grade: A)
Back in December I wrote: "In 2006 blogs will play a bigger role in how companies find and retain key talent. Smaller companies that might normally have a tough time positioning themselves as cutting edge places to work will use transparency to compete for top talent. At the same time, large company bloggers who establish a foothold as subject matter experts will find themselves increasingly wooed. Finally, a small group of companies will turn their talent loose in the blogopshere to keep them motivated and engaged... and visible."
Well, Scoble went to Podtech, I went to Edelman, and Om was set free. Case closed.
Trend V: Crash 2.0 (Grade: C+)
According to JupiterResearch, online display and search advertising spending will grow at an average annual rate of 10% between 2005 and 2010. Also, there is a huge disconnect between the money outlaid for online advertising and time spent online. This, I wrote last year, spells trouble for startups hoping to capitalize on online advertising. There won't be enough to go around.
If you measure this prediction by the number of startups that have shut down this year, I have been wrong. There have been only two notable failures: Fold and PubSub. However, I still contend that there is far more ad inventory on Web 2.00 sites than there are advertisers willing to buy it up. Michael Arrington and I disagreed on this at Gnomedex.
Trend VI: Features Creep (Grade: C+)
Last year I expressed concern that the breakout Web 2.0 companies of 2005 will slow down in innovating ever so slightly as they make sure they have the infrastructure in place to grow. So far, I think this was mostly wrong. While Bloglines is virtually the same app it was a year ago, there's still a lot of innovation to go round.
Trend VII: The Empire Strikes Back (Grade A-)
Finally, I wrote that big corporations will strike back in a big way in an effort to make sure they don't lose the online game to the small fries. I definitely think this is happening. Look at the new Netscape.com or NBC and YouTube tying up. The big companies know that they need to partner with startups or ape some of their best practices if they want to compete.
Technorati Tags: 2006 Trends
