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Technologies To Watch Fail In 2009
An anonymous reader writes "Microblogs, targeted advertising, social news, online video, streaming music, and enterprise social networking are among the technologies that will probably fail in 2009, according to a new report from Internet Evolution. The report cites revenue figures, failed or non-existent business models, and an overabundance of 'me-too' start-ups, combined with the current recession, as reasons the aforementioned technologies might not survive the year. 'Whereas the past couple of years have been defined by overcrowding and overfunding in the Web 2.0 space, and an onslaught of startups with no purpose or plan to make money, this recessionary year is likely to see more due diligence on the part of VCs, allowing strong companies and technologies to emerge from the smoldering pile of dead ones.'"
While I agree with your sentiment, I don't see the use of microblogs such as twitter. Regular blogs attract me as a possible source of information and well written information from someone more informed than a journalist at times.
All I see in microblogs is the internet version of that person calling home from the supermarket asking their insignificant other whether to get 1% or skim milk and other such nonsense.
Which isn't to say whether it has any real social value or not will make it fail as a business... it's just that I don't think it will really matter.
About 6 months ago I signed up to Blyk, a "free" mobile network for 16-25 year olds, which gave subscribers 43 minutes call time and 217 texts free per month (plenty for what I use). It was supported by advertising, every day I'd receive either an MMS or SMS with an advert, typically for clothes and music (that's what my demographic is meant to waste its money on, isn't it? Well, that and booze.)
Anyway, I haven't had an advert since about Christmas, and yesterday got a text from Blyk saying they were changing the deal to £15/month free credit, which works out as less texts/minutes at their prices (8p per text, 24p/min call). Maybe the business model wasn't quite as good as predicted.
Right now on twitter I'm following @bashcookbook and I get a bash tip every day. I also follow @thaumatrope and read little 140 character slivers of science fiction stories. @Outshine calls theirs prose poetry and it is all with a speculative fiction type spin. @oreillymedia keeps me up to date on oreilly stuff including conferences, web casts, new books and things they have on-line like blog posts and interviews.
This may not be your cup of tea - but for a lot of people it is a very popular way to receive and share information. The other people I follow are individuals who are pretty well known (Wil Wheaton, Jon Scalzi, Tim O'Reilly, etc.) and I'm interested in things like what they are doing, what they are reading, stuff like that.
Does all that matter? I'm not sure, it all depends on context. But to me personally it matters right now. There is also the fact that now that I have a number of friends who are also on twitter we are able to use it as a way of keeping in touch. Of course we could use instant messaging or email - but we don't. If we need to say something longer we use another method - but throughout the day twitter is usually enough.
Oh - and with the ability to search through all of this - it becomes an index of sorts as many microblog posts point to other places on the web. That's another feature that I believe brings real value. And I know that this is also available in other platforms - but what I've seen happen is that many people tend to microblog much more freely than they will do a regular blog post. So in the end it will get more information out there.
I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few weeks - which may be obvious. I just put in a request to host a project at source forge for a microblogging tool I'd like to build. So there's my bias. I'm pretty excited about what I see as some cool possibilities. Of course not everyone will be on board with this. It may never grow beyond a niche thing. But I remember the first time I was on facebook and thought "What is the point and who is ever going to do this?" Of course now just about everyone I know is on facebook.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
In order to survive, many of these sites and companies will just have to do the unthinkable and evolve to keep up with web trends.
For a good discussion of where the trends could be going, read this article: http://tech.lds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=371&Itemid=5
"Targeted advertising" has real problems. Ads on search results pages are valuable, because they're presented at the point that the user is actively looking for something. Vaguely relevant ads on other pages (the "Google Content Network" comes to mind) are a distraction, and far less valuable. Clicks on such ads are mostly from the 10% of web users who make 50% of the clicks, but don't buy much. Many advertisers have opted out of the Google Content Network (read Search Engine Watch). As we point out, about 36% of Google Content Network advertisers are "bottom-feeders", junk sites with no verifiable business behind them. There's been a slow decline in contextual advertising, and I expect that to continue, and maybe accelerate. Ad-supported sites will feel the squeeze.
Targeted advertising is effective if the advertiser has the user's buying history. Amazon exploits this successfully; they know exactly what you've bought. But spreading that information around creates privacy problems and loud objections. Merchants aren't keen about letting their competitors know who their best customers are. Payment companies like Visa and PayPay could in theory take that role, but they've been reluctant to do so for fear of regulatory backlash. Payment companies don't currently know what you bought, just who you bought it from. They'd need merchant cooperation to profile their customer base.
What this may mean is a network effect for broad-based online merchants like Amazon. The bigger they get, the better their targeted advertising becomes. Customers don't object, because they're dealing with one company which legitimately knows what they've bought. Amazon may take up the slack as brick-and-mortar stores go under. In consumer electronics, Circuit City, The Good Guys, CompUSA, etc. have all gone under, and Amazon is taking up much of the slack.
Ok, first thing: "Wireless radio". Think about it.
Second thing: No. If you're referring to cellphones with radios built in, there's no point: cars already have built-in radios.
If you're referring to connecting to a streaming radio service using the wireless Internet, the vast majority of cellphones offer no such facility. Even when they do, you're going to have to find a streaming service worth listening to (hey, here's an idea, subscribe to Sirius!) The free streaming services I've seen are generally either rebroadcasts of radio-accessible content (your car already has a radio), or ad-supported music stations (or non-ad supported stations that'll exist fleetingly at best.) You'll also generally have to pay more for your data subscription than the $12 per month Sirius charges for its content.
The point of Sirius-XM is not "woo! we have satellites!", it's "we have high quality content, you pay for it by subscribing rather than buying advertiser's products". If you're obsessing about how "technologies" are going to make "Sirius-XM" obsolete, then you have no idea what Sirius-XM is and you've ignored the part of my comment where I pointed out Sirius-XM can exist without satellites.
iPods contain a fixed collection of content that can only be updated when you're at a computer, with items you select in advance. I can't even begin to imagine why you'd bring them up as a Sirius-XM competitor.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
...to fail in 2009. Not all of them, obviously. Second Life will continue to trundle along (although they've lost about 3000 servers the last few months due to a rather unfortunate series of "gotcha" price increases), mostly due to its user content.
There's an entire industry of virtual worlds stuff, and almost every single startup in this space does the exact same thing: Take Second Life, remove the user content, add in dancing, music, and social networking embedding. Voila! Instant startup. We're talking dozens of companies doing the exact same thing over and over again.
So those guys are dead.
PS3's Home is dead on arrival (no user content). Google Lively's already dead. Any "enterprise" use of virtual worlds is in the research phase (or just using open source alternatives like OpenSim).
Anyone investing in virtual worlds tech in 2009 is a chump, sorry.
hookers and grits.