Predictions ’05
Friday, January 7th, 2005
Blogs will continue to set the pace for news. We’ll read lots of stories about baseball bloggers, tech bloggers, gay bloggers leading the charge on important stories within their niches.
Meanwhile, alarmed publishers will continue to complain about irresponsible, untrained journalists, suggesting that they be regulated.
Consumers worried that their digital photos will be lost in a decade in archaic hard-drive crypts will turn to online photo hosting services promising to keep people’s photos in usable formats. The services will raise prices and wisely rebrand as “digital photo curators.”
Walmart or Ikea will begin selling pre-fab houses.
We’ll see a boomlet of Internet entrepreneurs doing the online Atlantic arbitrage, exporting their VATless electronic services and goods into Europe for expensive Euros.
Starbucks will open an experimental “executive lounge” coffee shop, with upscale amenities for entrepreneurs and business people.
One of the big academic journal publishers suddenly fold, as libraries and academics desert expensive musty print en mass for online peer reviewed journals.
India will leave the back office and take the lead in innovation and new market creation. Watch out for the Bill Gates or Andy Grove of Bangalore.