Bradley Howard's Blog

Review of my 2011 predictions

Dec 22, 2011 at 10:51am

Back in January I made 12 predictions for digital media for 2011. I did the same for 2010 - i.e. I made the predictions and then analysed them in December, and faired well. How did I do this year?

1. Rapid demise of Flash

Bang on here. We're witnessing HTML5 rapidly overtaking Flash, mainly because users want to view sites on their iOS devices, which don't support Flash. Flash for mobiles has been dropped in favour of Adobe Air - the problem with Air (an irony in the product name) is that it's too heavy for downloading over mobile: Adobe Air apps are very large. HTML5 is both very powerful and not linked to a specific vendor, which is exactly the type of technology web developers embrace quickly.

Prediction rating: 10/10

2. Local local local

The use of Google on mobile devices is increasingly rapidly, and one of Google's most powerful functions is to provide local results on mobile devices. Facebook Check In and FourSquare will continue competing in the future, providing more relevant functionality which is only good for end consumers.

Prediction rating: 10/10

3. LinkedIn to IPO

Yes, LinkedIn IPO'd in the summer at a market capitalisation of around $6bn. At the end of the first day of trading, shares were selling at over $94. They are now worth just under $65. The actual variance has been from $55 to $122. Personally I think the future is very bright for LinkedIn, as long as it sticks to it's core, professional-only values and steers cleer of Facebook.

Prediction rating: 10/10

4. More "paywalls" will increase the expectations of having to pay for content

I predicted that we'd see at least six mainstream publications start charging for online content. What was very difficult to predict was that this was going to be made possible via the iPad. The iPad has been the saviour of global newspapers by offering a simple charging model for content owners. Many newspaper websites are still free, but most apps charge for content. The main point is that user now expect to pay for content, but it took the shift to a new platform to illustrate this.

Prediction rating: 8/10

5. Financial Services move into social networks

Banks have had other things to worry about this year, and whilst many are dipping their toes into the water with Twitter and Facebook, I'm not aware of any doing it particularly well. Searching for the popular high street banks on Facebook returns a rather fragmented list. I expect this to change in the near future.

Prediction rating: 2/10

6. Facebook to follow Compuserve even more

Try and name a brand that isn't on Facebook. In January I said that we should expect a Skype messaging style interface and in July, we got Skype inside Facebook. I predicted we'd have a billion users by the end of the year, although this is unlikely to come true because in September, Facebook announced they'd broken through 800 million users - still an amazing feat.

Prediction rating: 8/10

7. A clear leader will emerge in Interactive TV

Interactive TV is now firmly called Smart TV, and no, a clear leader hasn't emerged yet. The remotes all look different, and operating systems are different, and with the latest XBox release, Microsoft is putting up a decent fight to use your games console as the Interactive device.

Prediction rating: 0/10

8. Rapid rise in CPC

I said that CPC rates would rise, and noted the cost of some terms. Here they are:

keyword	Cost in December 2011	Cost in December 2012
ebook	£0.55	£0.74
sandwich	£1.00	£1.05
drink	£1.00	N/A
laptop	£1.25	£1.31
paper	£0.75	£0.76

I estimated costs would increase at least 50% over the next year however they have mostly gone up a much smaller amount, with the exception of the highly competitive ebook market.

Prediction rating: 2/10

9. A $50 A5 eReader

I was $10 out - Walmart are selling an eReader for under $60. Bearing in mind there was nothing available for less than $120 at the start of the year, this demonstrates how mainstream eReaders have become.

Prediction rating: 6/10

10. App stores will decentralise, leading to confused customers (again)

The term app store has become abused. Now everyone has an app store whereas a year ago their product had an 'add-on'. If you go into a car showroom I'd half expect the optional extras to be available from an app-store! Fortunately the market hasn't become decentralised as predicted - to the benefit of end users.

Prediction rating: 0/10

11. The economy will continue to splutter

Obviously this has come true. I predicted that companies would need to start demonstrating clear revenues, including Twitter, and this has materialised as $140million this year.

Prediction rating: 10/10

12. Chrome to far exceed Firefox market share

Perhaps 'far exceed' is an exaggeration, however in early December Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time, and it's here to stay. I'm a big fan of Chrome for a number of reasons (all the settings are stored centrally "in the cloud", it auto updates seamlessly and it's very fast), and hardly use Firefox any longer.

Prediction rating: 8/10

So there we have it. Overall I was reasonably accurate with the predictions. I'm working on 2012 predictions, which feels more difficult at this time. Maybe it's the economy/ general outlook. Any help would be appreciated!

Photo courtesy of lacomj on Flickr

tags:

Adobe, Facebook, Firefox, Flash, Google Chrome, Kindle, LinkedIn, TV, advertising, apple, banking, ecommerce, economy, finance, iPhone,

4 Comments

Speaking at Social Media Week

Feb 1, 2011 at 9:30am

Next Thursday Endava are hosting an event as part of Social Media Week in association with one of our platform stack partners, Telligent.

We decided to create the event because many of our Financial Services clients are asking us why they should be using social media. Note that there's a big difference in our world between social media and social networks.

We started planning the event a while ago and then saw that Social Media Week are organising a number of events next week, so we moved it back a fortnight.

I'll be discussing some of the basic principles of social media for Financial Services. We also have a couple of banks talking about their experiences with social media, and just as importantly - where they think it's going. These are senior managers within banks, because social media has become a serious consideration for them.

The final speaker of the evening is the author Richard Watson. I've written some reviews of Richard's books in this blog before, and contributed some comments to his blog too. Meeting Richard as part of the research for the event was an experience in itself - his office is a floating battleship on the Thames, and he's a fascinating chap.

Altogether I'm looking forward to the event as I always do. I'm pretty excited about listening to the other speakers - we deliberately sought out to find people with their own strong opinions on where this type of technology is going, and boy do they have opinions.

If you're interested in attending, register here very soon because there are only a few spaces remaining. As I mentioned, it is highly targeted towards Financial Services. We're planning to do a follow up event later this year for other industries.

tags:

Endava, banking, finance, live events, social media, trends,

0 Comments

Twelve Digital Media Predictions for 2011

Dec 30, 2010 at 7:22am

Well here we are. 2011 predictions below. My 2010 predictions worked out pretty good and I've been asked for the 2011 predictions for the last six weeks.

1. Rapid demise of Flash

Flash has two big problems in 2010: Apple (specifically, the iPhone and iPad) and HTML 5. I don't see Apple relenting on their decision to enable Flash (specifically pre-compiled code), and users will start moving away from Flash sites out of necessity. Developers already like HTML 5, and it looks reasonably flexible to replace a lot of what Flash has historically need to be used for. YouTube is already using HTML 5 to deliver video. If the BBC iPlayer is using HTML 5 next year, let's award 10/10 for this prediction!

2. Local local local

Local businesses will 'never have had it better'. FourSquare, Facebook Pages and Places, and Google Places can all help local businesses. My local sandwich shop at work can now have a digital relationship with consumers for no cost. The rising use of smartphones will continue to provide more local results when searching (for example, type in hospital into Google on your smartphone - even at the moment it produces a list of local results).

3. LinkedIn to IPO

The Facebook for business, the most useful social network of them all if you want to hire staff, track companies, keep in touch with former colleagues, research 'people' will float in 2011.

4. More "paywalls" will increase the expectations of having to pay for content

Paywalls will undergo new branding, and together with mobile apps charging a subscription fee, the days of free content will start coming to an end. I'm not saying all sites will become pay only within a year, however expect to see at least another half dozen main titles beyond Murdoch's empire start charging for their hard work.

5. Financial Services move into social networks

Financial services are walking around social networks scratching their heads wondering how to approach the biggest B2C of all time. I predict at least one Financial Services organisation will get it right, and everyone else will copy and improve. Expect some big announcements of huge Financial Services brands linking together with the big social networks.

6. Facebook to follow Compuserve even more

I've likened Facebook to the walled garden environment of Compuserve before. Expect to see 'new' features in Facebook like sending files to friends, Facebook wireless access points or even broadband provision (remember - Compuserve started life as an ISP), premium (paid entrance) Facebook Pages, offline browsing or a phone service (think Google Talk or Skype). We'll all think it's brilliant, and then read the Wikipedia Compuserve article and realise we've been here before. I also expect Facebook to break into China and reach 1 billion global users.

7. A clear leader will emerge in Interactive TV

Buying a new TV at the moment? Which Internet/Interactive TV standard are you going to buy? There are so many types available, it's really confusing to consumers. By the end of the year (Christmas 2011) there will be one or two clear leaders. And expect to see a wireless keyboard lying on your sofa next year or 2012 instead of a simple remote.

8. Rapid rise in CPC

Ad CPC (Cost Per Click) rates are rapidly rising. Take the biggest network, Google AdWords. The cost per click of the following items as of 29/12 is:

ebook - £0.55
sandwich - £1.00
drink - £1.00
laptop - £1.25
paper - £0.75

I estimate costs will go up at least 50% over the next year because of the growth of online businesses, and they will all want to advertise their products.

9. A $50 A5 eReader

eReaders will hit a critical mass when the price point is low enough. I estimate this to be around $50 (£35) because this is a reasonable price point where a consumer won't be too upset at losing their eReader. At that point, schools will seriously consider replacing paper books with eReaders. Expect more mainstream books to only be available electronically.

10. App stores will decentralise, leading to confused customers (again)

The beauty of the iPhone's app store is that all apps come through the store tested and vetted. It also provides a full backup solution if you regularly synchronise your iPhone with a computer. The Android Market is the opposite - it's like anarchy! Apple are releasing their own full app store for Apple computers. Amazon will do something similar. You'll have lots of app store logins, and it will all be confusing. In fact it will become so fragmented that it will be similar to how you buy software at the moment - one piece comes from Amazon, another from Apple, another from eBuyer, and so on.

11. The economy will continue to splutter

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work this one out. However the implications will be that brands will drive their marketing organisations to produce clearer ROI on campaigns (especially Facebook, to pay for the expensive UK based full time Community Managers). This is currently difficult to do, but marketing departments will drive analytics vendors to improve their products beyond just referrer stats. Despite huge funding increases at the end of 2010, Twitter will need to start generating some serious revenues, so expect ads on Twitter similar to the reach blocks on Facebook.

12. Chrome to far exceed Firefox market share

Chrome is here to stay, and will only increase market share when the new Google laptop (and tablet) arrives. Microsoft won't back down on Internet Explorer either. Which leaves Firefox in third place, and will just slide further down because users won't know why they'll want a third browser on their computer.

tags:

Adobe, Facebook, Firefox, Flash, Google Chrome, Kindle, LinkedIn, TV, advertising, apple, banking, ecommerce, economy, finance, iPhone,

2 Comments

Software ages like people

Jun 28, 2010 at 7:01pm

I spent some time in a meeting with some representatives of our test organisation, and a senior test manager from one of our finance clients.

He quoted an analogy between software applications and people:

When software is first relieved, there is a novelty period, where the organisation is happy (relieved) to have launched the application
After the novelty, a high number of issues are found in the application, and the organisation may have to change a number of processes and people to support the application
At 2 years old, the application may go through the 'terrible twos' - the application is still a little unstable, with further instability from original developers who have left the organisation, leading to a loss in experience
At 5 years, the application will be much more stable, with many new updates applied to the original application
By 40 years old (yes, there are a number of successful applications of this age, especially in finance), the application will be very mature, causing very little grief, and surprisingly, you can now apply a lot of change (very regular rollouts) to an application of this age.

I found the analogy quite interesting - especially considering that 'Digital Media' is some 15 years old. So do we need to be worried about the teenage years?

tags:

digital media, finance, software development, testing,

0 Comments

Ten Digital Media Predictions for 2010

Jan 20, 2010 at 9:06pm

Here are my predictions for the coming year. In 12 months time, let's review what actually happened!

1. Reinvestment in Digital Media.

Based on a lack of investment in 2009, I think a lot of companies will see a website revamp, or a new product version appearing in 2010. This will be especially true of companies who chose to 'cut corners' in 2009, for example deciding to build their own proprietary CMS. This coming year, they'll choose to re-engineer the same site using an off-the-shelf, or even open source CMS.

2. Lack of new products due to R&D being slashed in 2009.

I'm not sure we'll see so many new Spotifys (Spotifies?) appearing in 2010, because of a lack of investment/R&D budget last year. Maybe we'll see new stuff appear at the end of the year though. The exceptions will be anything from Apple, with the imminent launch of their iSlate.

3. A number of live events on YouTube.

Yup, live is where the value is. And Google know this. So expect some new live events appearing on the platform in 2010.

4. More Flex applications, less Silverlight.

Flex will succeed because the creative agencies like Adobe and not Microsoft. This might change in the longer term, but for 2010, expect to see some sites migrate into very funky (I can't use the adjective flash here!) Flex applications.

5. SecondLife to further decline.

Yup, not many people are writing about SecondLife these days. My own personal view is that in the long term, the web will be accessible through a graphical interface probably not far off SecondLife, but for the next 5-10 years, the standard browser is very much here to stay. The LindeX (the market to sell real world cash for made up cash - quite remarkable really) is in a steady decline, and the data has been moved from publicly available to a free signup. Here's the graph as of today. Next yearm expect the graph to be totally unavailable, or in steep decline. A shame, but some technologies are just too ahead of their time.

6. The UK to start accepting blogging at the same status as the US.

In the US, bloggers have almost the same status as journalists. That's a bit of a sweeping statement, and my apologies to journalists who have had a turbulent couple of years, and an even bleaker future for a trade that's totally unfairly undervalued. Anyway, in the US, bloggers are often quoted by journalists and news organisations, whereas in the UK they are dismissed by the news organisations. Of course there are some exceptions such as The Guardian, but in the main, most people think that bloggers are nerds/IT geeks. This is a view which Twitter & the term 'microblogging' has helped to change slowly, but by 2011, I expect to see some famous UK bloggers be quoted by the press.

7. Offline browsers make a comeback.

My view of the Internet is that the same applications are constantly being re-invented. Facebook is like a modern version of Compuserve (a nice clean, walled environment); Skype is ICQ on steroids; Spotify is Real Networks (OK, just sort of!); Twitpic is like a billion free image sharing sites; today I even stumbled across a 'directory' of Twitter users - and directories kind of died off a few years ago! I remember installing offlines browsers on my Palm V in the mid 1990s, which effectively downloaded snapshots of a website on to my Palm, for me to read on the way home. I had a similar application on a few early mobile phones. Expect similar applications on iPhones, Kindles and iSlates to start appearing, so that users of the Tube and other areas can read articles on the move, outside of an RSS reader.

8. The FIFA World Cup sees huge use of video over mobile & broadband.

Put it another way, if it doesn't, expect to see broadcasters and mobile operators to pull out of mobile video for the foreseeable future. Expect some amazing stats for broadband use from Sky, ESPN & FIFA. In 2005 we were discussing a 10 deal for bandwidth that went into Petabytes, and everyone thought we were mad. Expect to see that word banded around a lot during the World Cup.

9. Expect ebooks to take off.

This has the potential for a huge market. I estimate football club programmes, concert programmes, manuals, etc. all to be available in ebook formats, either free or very low cost by the end of the year. It will be a mini-reinvention of MP3s...

10. 2010... the year of Web CRM

I have no idea why it's taken so long for a vendor to come up with a Web based CRM system. Facebook Connect, Windows Live signin & Google Orkut are the main contenders, but does a major website really want to release their list of customers to be shared with Facebook, Microsoft or Google? No. There are CRM vendors who charge a 'per user' model - which is useless for a free sign up model. A number of the newsletter systems are extending into this area - with Traction probably being the most attractive. But if you want a standalone web authentication and single customer view with Single Sign On (SSO), who are the sub $50k vendors? Exactly. So expect to see new players start appearing here.

tags:

CRM, FLex, SecondLife, Silverlight, YouTube, blogging, digital media, ebooks, finance, islate, loyalty, media, predictions, social media, spotify, top 10, trends,

0 Comments

The cost of Tesco Clubcard

Jan 12, 2010 at 9:31am

After spending £105 million on the Clubcard relaunch in April 2009 (http://www.tescoplc.com/plc/media/pr/pr2009/2009-05-08/), Tesco announced they gave away a further £100 million in vouchers during December 2009 (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b1c97d0-ffe2-11de-ad8c-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

tags:

Tesco, finance, localty,

0 Comments

Tags

Review of my 2011 predictions

Speaking at Social Media Week

Twelve Digital Media Predictions for 2011

Software ages like people

Ten Digital Media Predictions for 2010

The cost of Tesco Clubcard

Bradley Howard

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