2009 Predictions Wrapup

So we have a few days left in 2009, but really, I doubt my results change much between now and then. So in may I published my predictions from January, they were 9 total.

So here are my predictions from last year and my "grade" for each.

1. People start building businesses. So I posited that people would eschew crazy business plans and lean more towards the sensible cash-flow businesses. Not sure if this actually started happening or not. The economic turmoils of the world have put a damper on new hyped up companies, and the ones that did get hyped up really weren't game changing from a business model perspective. We did see a shift to getting people to pay for things more, which I see as a positive thing. Grade: N/A

2. Community APIs take another leap forward Last year I posited FB connect, and others would get big adoptions. So I think I was dead on with this one. Though I've been espousing the use of community APIs for years. So I am gonna give myself an A- (friend connect and open social are both struggling IMO)

3. The portability of the social graph gets that much closer So I posited that things like DiSo, APML, and FOAF would get big boosts. That didn't happens so much, but the major networks did open a bit, and OpenID had a great year, so for this, I'm gonna give myself a B.

4. Small businesses come onto the web even more If you count Twitter, then sure, tons of them signed up for twitter and facebook fan pages. Then promptly stopped updating them... I still think someone can come up w/a good solution. A-

5. Companies will adopt social media in new ways I think this was proven as we saw more and more creative uses of facebook fan pages, applications, twitter contests, blog contests, etc. So even though this was an easy guess to make, I'm gonna give myself an A.

6. Mobile payment and micropayments will go mainstream this year Oooh. So micropayments and mobile payments didn't technically go mainstream yet. But we did see a large increase in small purchasing thanks to facebook and the social gaming arena. So this is a draw, since it took most of the year to prime the community for accepting micropayments. Grade C

7. Small is the new big I posited that small projects would sprout up everywhere. I think thanks to twitter's API (and the many copycat APIs today) that we do have tons of simple sites built around these things in short periods of time. So Grade A+

8. Twitter/micro-content hits mainstream. Twitter is now being used in TV shows. 'Nuff said. A+

9. Social networks will start talking to each other Well lots of social networks are using facebook connect, and more and more are supporting data portability. So I'll say A-. Would have been A+ if Hi5, orkut, or Myspace had adopted FB Connect.

Stay tuned, my 2010 predictions are already written and should go up next week.