John Battelle Predictions For 2005

John Battelle did a very good job with his predictions for 2004, and his look ahead for 2005 looks pretty solids as well. Go read his post in a new windows, and come back here for my thoughts.

#s 1-3 - He's damn right, and you'll see a lot of moves in that arena, including from myself. If got a team of very talented people putting that together right now (be ready to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds).

#4 - Old media will try, but any strides they make will be through purchases, not innovation. Old media is traditionally terrible at pulling off new technologies on their own, and they view many of these technologies as competition, and attempt to create incompatible "new" things. The urge to monetize will kill many of these efforts, since the vast majority of the internet will refuse any subscription services.

#5 - I think we'll see Blogger take some pages from MSN Spaces, and design a "Plug-and-Blog" version of Blogger for the vast majority of people. We'll start to see more industry standards as well.

#6 - Why would they stop?

#7 - Google needs to diversify its revenue streams, so this has been a given for a while. By this time next year, Froogle and similar non-advertising offerings will make up 10-15% of Google's revenues.

#8 - I disagree. Microsoft will gain 3-5% of market share as soon as MSN Search Beta goes public. There's no reason a company that has decent market share with horrible search wouldn't gain share when it launches a very good engine. By year's end, Microsoft will be marketted as the search engine that's "just as good as Google" (it won't be, but it'll be close enough for most) but does more for you.

#9 - Firefox will reach 15% by March, but will not crack 20%. Microsoft will market the AOL browser as the new Internet Explorer, while taking all the lessons AOL learned from making the browser and putting it in an IE update at the end of the year. If MS doesn't release an IE update, it will make sure to put MSN Explorer on as many systems as it can. MSN 10 will have many of the features Firefox has, while being more accessible.

#10 - Don't be surprised if this is hyped, but never materializes. If it does, it'll be like A9: very interesting, but nowhere near hitting the big time.

#11 - Search engines will become more like regular companies, dealing with the local issues, just like everybody else. Even capitulating to China is something they'll learn to live with, because if they don't someone else will, and there's plenty of money involved.

#12 - Yup.

#13 - Double-yup. And don't be surprised if Yahoo makes a spectular failed bid.

#14 - Apple will launch a video iPod, or it will lose a lot of market share. Portable video players already exist, and they will start to sell very well. The fight for portable media players will mirror the Palm/Windows CE battles. And Google TV Search is on the way, of course.

#15 - I have never believed in the market for mobile web. The mobile web will turn into the same thing handhelds turned into: useful for professional, but never as big as the hype made it out to be.

#16 - I will read John's book, and give it a favorable review, because I have always liked his writing. Unless its a huge departure, in which case we will all discover new synonyms for "suck".

#17 - John, good luck. I'd love to hear what you have in mind. I'd also love to beat you to it.

What else will happen? Will MSN Search continue to grab headlines and red state net users? Will Google finally open up and reveal what goes on inside its walls? Will blogging conquer its problems with ethics and editing? Will Desktop Search ever live up to the hype? Will Google conquer search spam? Will Google Images ever get updated? Will Slate still exist? Will MSNBC still exist? Will Steve Ballmer start blogging (Bill Gates never will)? Will newspapers ever catch on with younger people?