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What are the big trends that you are watching for in 2010?

They can be relevant to technology, business, your own industry, whatever...

For me...

  • The Apple Tablet - 'Tablet PCs done right' could be a game changer.
  • The privacy backlash that is brewing against social networks - and the way in which people are wanting to control their exposure and get a grip on their privacy
  • The 'real time' web - tools that go beyond Twitter to bring information, trends, reviews to the masses much faster.
  • The rise of the small business, home worker, independent consultant, entrepreneur as opposed to people working for the large corporation. This is a growing meta-market in itself.

What are you watching this year?

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3 Answers

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1: Ditto the Apple iSlate. It's going to change how you buy and read books (kindle for iPhone is a very good reading experience; for the iSlate is will be awesome), subscribe to media (from NYT to People Magazine), how you connect to people (videoconferencing, the Social world). For starters.

2: US/EU will get what Japan has had for years: the mobile culture. mobile as payment mechanism, offices without landlines, mobile social and all the rest. If that means AT&T needs to be broken up again to get the service people pay for, so be it.

3: The single broadest software market, IMO, will be building out all the apps in all the flavors that a post-industrial, work for yourself and get paid for value global economy. For example, we have 10% unemployment today and a need in the online economy to be able to easily and reliably subcontract work. Someone is going to put that together.

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Point 3 assumes that the 10% are employable in a way that some software can turn into value as self-employed people. That is a HUGE assumption. – TimJ♦ Jan 2 '10 at 3:40
That's not my assumption. I assume that some number of that 10% can be tapped. For example let's say you wrote a "Virtual Assistant in a Box" app (CMS, checklists, calendar, etc.) and charged zero for it but an affiliate percentage of 5% on all revenue. Zero upfront to them, multiple revenue streams to you. – Bob Walsh Jan 3 '10 at 16:34
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  1. Move towards mobile devices
  2. Transition of small business apps. from local to cloud (The death of the small server?)
  3. Reduced importance of the operating systems in terms if defining computing.
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  1. Location aware applications
  2. Browser OS
  3. Social analytics
  4. Real time web
  5. Augmented reality
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re: #4 - "real-time" and web are antithetical. Real time implies no/low latency and the web is the web. It is not possible. If you mean a watered-down version of "real-time" then perhaps you can elaborate. – TimJ♦ Jan 2 '10 at 3:41
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@Tim - phone calls have latency (ever watch an interview on TV via satellite?), but I think most people consider it real-time. – JeffO Jan 2 '10 at 4:35
Hmm. I am working with financial market data. We talk about microsecond and millisecond latency. I guess I am just comparing relative "meanings" of "real-time". – TimJ♦ Jan 11 '10 at 22:24

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