It’s easy to scoff at business predictions for the coming year. But the best social media prognosticators (like Shiv Signh in his SmartBrief on Social Media interview) have a leg up on their counterparts in other industries, since they can look to hardware to light the way. Augmented reality. Geotagging. Apps for everything. These are technologies that are just now starting to hit the mainstream, so it only makes sense that 2010 will see companies developing software to take advantage of these growing opportunities. Saying that our software will try catch up to our hardware in 2010 seems like a safe bet to me.
But of course it doesn’t end there. The really dangerous question is, “What technologies will we all be buzzing about this time next year?” I won’t pretend that I know the answer. But I’m willing to bet that whatever Pranav Mistry is working on a year from now will have huge implications for social media for years to come. Watch this video of him demonstrating SixthSense Technology. Now envision what that does to the social space. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if a year from now we’ll all be trying to figure out how to take advantage of a world where our social connections and our physical space are finally merged.
What are your predictions for the coming year? What new ideas are we going to be talking about in 2010?