The Best of the Best in 2012 Predictions
December 29, 2011
The last week of the year is often a time of reflection—a time to look back on the previous year and to look forward to what might come in the next. A time, if you will, for year-end lists and blogs about 2012 predictions. Major tech, SEO, and Internet marketing blogs have all released their forecasts for the Web in 2012, and in that spirit we bring you the best (whether the most probable, or not) of the best guesses for what another year of the Internet will bring.
The folks over at ReadWriteWeb get pretty serious about their year-end coverage each year, recapping every major event and publishing several prediction lists from regular writers. Richard McManus, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of RWW, has a knack for foresight, and we can only hope his third prediction this year will come true:
“3. Google’s Chrome browser will make dramatic inroads into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, coming within 10-15% of it by the end of 2012. This will be due to mainstream people finally abandoning IE in droves. By the end of 2012, Chrome will have close to 30% of the market according to Net Applications (it currently has 17.6%) and IE will have just over 40% (it currently has 52.6%).”
Please, humanity. Please see the light at the end of the browsing tunnel. Even if you don’t make the jump all the way to Chrome like many have done and hopefully will continue to do, at least try FireFox. One of Customer Magnetism’s experts on the subject and web developer, Lindsay, even admitted “it’s the only leading browser with no support for most things that are considered standard.”
The very next point in McManus’ list is also probably the most likely to come true:
“4. Facebook will have initial teething problems with its Timeline, but by end of 2012 it will be seen as a triumph – as millions of people begin to use Facebook over 2012 as their digital memory bank. I don’t know if that’s a brave (new world?) prediction or not, but right now there are a lot of skeptics about Timeline. So I’m firmly betting on Timeline being a big success for Facebook in 2012.”
While it’s easy to agree that Timeline will be the future of Facebook profiles, it might not be due to user appreciation for the layout. Facebook makes changes pretty regularly and people always complain—mostly because a lot of users feel like they just got comfortable when something new throws them off their rocker. Despite all the groups and fan pages titled something along the lines of “GIVE US OLD FACEBOOK BACK” now and in the past, Facebook soldiers on. Though Timeline brought along with it some of the biggest changes in Facebook’s history, skeptics and naysayers will most likely accept them and move on. When Facebook accounts for one in every seven minutes of time spent online, it gives those users a lot of time to adjust, accept, and continue stalking away.
Speaking of Facebook, Business Insider made a bold prediction about the growth of the social network: “Facebook Will Grow Faster Than Anyone Thinks And Hit 1 Billion Users.” With 800 million users already, it’s not really that far off. Business Insider attributed doubts of the site’s ability to not plateau and hit a billion to the fact that it is currently blocked from huge potential markets like China and Russia, but asserted that “there is still a lot of room for growth in places like South-East Asia, India and Brazil, and Facebook’s network effect is a powerful thing.” Whether their effect is strong enough to take them to a billion users next year, we’ll just have to see.
Leaving huge sites like Facebook behind, Erica Swallow from Mashable delved into the possibilities for small businesses in 2012 and made a pretty solid conjecture that no one would have imagined making for 2011: “Businesses Pull Back on Daily Deal Spend.”
Even though it wasn’t too long ago that they were one of the hottest, most up-and-coming marketing methods, here at the end of 2011 it’s easy to see why small businesses would back away from daily deals like Groupon and LivingSocial. Swallow got it exactly right, stating “while we saw a lot of small businesses success stories in the group buying space, we also heard of a number of disasters, including the story of a baker who almost went out of business after running a Groupon deal. For small businesses running on low margins, daily deals aren’t worth it.” So as daily deals’ popularity wanes, the next big thing will undoubtedly bud in 2012.
And when it does, we’ll be there to fill you in.
