Get more articles like this and Register for our Forum.

Nostradamus

If you want to see some lists of predictions, let me point you to a few of my favorites. As for this post, what I am going to “predict” is where the crazy train known as the blogosphere will be heading and what we can expect to see.

These aren’t so much predictions as they are truisms. Enjoy.

1. One last hurrah for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg will ignite a blogstorm when he launches his next “game changing” attempt to monetize Facebook. Objectively speaking, it will have little to no real chance of justifying 1/10th of Facebook’s purported valuation but for about a week we’ll think it does.


Sources Say . . . Ask Again Later

2. Blogebrity. The talk of the town will be whether a tech entrepreneur can parlay internet fame into mainstream success. Expect at least one blog network (or else a major player like Kevin Rose) to try to make the jump.

3. There will be a breakout vlogging sensation that finally manages to hit the right buttons by attracting the three major pillars of the internet: MySpace, Facebook and the Blogosphere. As usual, this success will be followed up by dozens of copy cat attempts that mostly miss the point.

4. The writers strike will get us all to question the relevance of broadcast media. A startup will be born that takes this imagined hole in the landscape and tries to plug it. Since it will likely not be put together by people who understand both the web and broadcast media, it will die spectacularly.

5. A few more mainstream media alumni will jump onto the blogging train. Chances are we still won’t notice how closely “citizen journalists” are beginning to resemble to real thing.

6. The rich will get richer. For the first time, we will notice that the barriers to entry for a blogger who wants to break into “the club” are getting extremely high. Expect an array of “A-list” debates, culminating with the realization that this argument happens every year.

7. A few new types of web products will be popularized. Expect a few new buzzwords to take the place of Crowdsource and Social Graph.

8. Ted of Uncov joins Valleywag, or at least becomes a part time contributor.

(Image) (RSS)

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • bodytext
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Reddit
  • Slashdot