Friday Links: Predictions for 2009

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Late December/early January is a magical time for a blogger. It’s the Festival of Lists — best ofs, worst ofs, the year recapped, and of course, my personal favorite, predictions.

Here are a few of the predictions floating out on the Web.

Read Write Web’s 2009 Web Predictions: Apps that do filtering, inferring and recommendation have a great year; several will release plug-ins for Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook and other ‘sipping from the firehose’ apps.

117 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2009: 2009 will feature the greatest redirect in marketing approach that the media industry has seen since the explosive growth of cable television (and its subsequent usage opportunities that caused planning confusion in the 1980s and early 90s) . Looking forward, savvy marketers will broker deals with media companies not for reduced page rates or air time, but for their subscriber list – the more selects available, the better.

42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009: As mainstream media pares staff and traditional media readership declines, opportunities for brand marketers to get out their message will evolve dramatically. No longer needing to persuade mainstream media gatekeepers, brand marketers will realize the critical need to provide relevant, quality content.

Girls in Tech’s 2009 Tech Predictions: Cloud services and computing is not new, but we will probably see these services and companies really take off this year. A great example of a cloud service is photo-sharing sites. It’s really any service that allows the consumer to store data or information anywhere but their computer or mobile phone. Also, software-as-a-service companies are based on this model as well. It’s about paying-as-you-go instead of financing a big software purchase.

Endgaget Predictions for 2009: Tiny iPhone, giant iPod.

2009 Online Marketing Predictions from TrendSpotting: In the face of overall economic turmoil, online ad spending holding up a little better than in other media

36 Predictions for 2009 in Media/Tech/Pop: Newspapers. At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Predictions for Google’s 2009: Google’s efforts to promote Chrome will change people’s perception about Google, which will be increasingly associated with Microsoft.

My predictions for 2009:

  • We will hear a lot about personal branding, it will take awhile for people to realize it’s really about being yourself
  • Gen Xers will reluctantly give their coolest generation title to the Millenials while simultaneously declaring nobody cares about being cool
  • Ironically, Grunge will become fashionable again, flannel enthusiasts rejoice
  • Bloggers and journalists will realize they are on the same team
  • Nike will invent a pair of shoes with a GPS in the tongue that Twitters your location whenever you stop for more than five minutes
  • There will not be enough advancement in robot cleaning maids, I will be disappointed
  • Something amazing will happen

What do you think 2009 has in store for the world?