Although it is May 2012 there are still tons of things that can and will happen this year in the world of technology and social media, so I thought I would share a few predictions I have been thinking about. We all know that 2012 is the year that Facebook goes public, selling shares to all and sundry for what will no doubt be the tune of billions of dollars, making Mark Zuckerberg a huge amount of money in the process (lucky him). There will likely be a sort of fencing in approach for Facebook this year with less and less data being available for outside companies like Google to use in their searches. Facebook will then release a beta version of their own search engine that is not linked up with Bing. Facebook will also announce plans to get into the browser business and take on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and others in an attempt to integrate the user experience of web browsing with their own network. So, even whilst browsing anywhere on the internet, users will still be available for Facebook chats, webcam chats via Skype and getting alerts when friend send them messages, tag their pictures and whatever else people get notifications for. Micro blogging will become bigger than what it is right now. Tumblr has increased in it’s user numbers and new startups will challenge even Tumblr. People are already linking their Tumblr accounts with Twitter and I see this trend continuing and not just with web nerds, but with more and more people. More blogs will go video! Taking on YouTube and other already established websites, making it easier to set up a vblog without dealing with Google (if you were so inclined). This same feature will also become an aspect of Facebook, allowing users to post video messages to peoples walls, such as wishing them a happy birthday. Everyone who has a laptop already has a webcam, so this will take off after a short period of beta testing. Google has already dropped their Video Search feature, instead focussing users on YouTube instead of other video content providers, no doubt under the impression that if they didn’t they would suffer with a loss of YouTube users. Mobile browsing goes BIG! Most of us already browse the internet through our smartphones (from this forum at least), but I predict that more and more people will move away from cheaper phones as the budget range of android phones get cheaper and cheaper. This will mean that websites that fail to cater for mobile browsers will suffer in the long run and a host of data plans will be marketed in order to cover the rising costs of the infrastructure needed to cover this growth. All in all, we will see what I get correct out of my predictions…
