Looking forward to 2006

Making predictions is for mugs, but here goes anyway:

1. Blogging and podcasting will continue to grow exponentially in Australia. This is a no-brainer really. But good to start off with an easy one. What I'm hoping is that we can shake off some of the dopey 'diary' view of social media which persists among the ignorant (yeah, smartyblog judges I do mean you).
2. Blogging and podcasting will become a commercially viable alternative to traditional media in some niche areas ; music, of course,  but also food and wine and lifestyle stuff like that. Blogs and podcasts are just more compelling ways of finding information and learning and participating around these areas.One of the lessons of the success of professional bloggers like Melbourne's very own Darren Rowse is that blogs are already challenging trade and specialist publications. Ditto, the podcast network. There's money to be made with the right niche and a bit of savvy about how to monetise the audience interest. One of the many great insights I got from Darren this year is the idea that unlike with a traditional publication, blog posts can go on earning revenue forever.
3. Media companies will have to learn from professional bloggers. At the moment they don't use their databases to generate ad revenue they take the more limited approach of trying to sell old stuff (an idea that sucks really on a lot of levels). The media will also have to recognise that it needs bloggers writing on its sites to keep the traffic flow going to its sites throughout the day if they are going to keep their share of that growing internet advertising revenue. Journalists are going to have to become bloggers and vice versa.
4. The growth of regional and local blogs. I'm waitng for this to happen in Australia. One of the problems of course is the lack of broadband outside Australia's major centres but that will change hopefully and will see an explosion of blogs filling the gaps left by the disappearance of non-economic local newspapers and radio stations. Local blogs with daily or weekly local news podcasts would be fabulous for many marginal communities.
5. We'll stop pitching blogs and podcasts and start talking about media channels to clients. Sorry, I heard this term on a podtech podcast on the w/e and I can't remember which one but it struck me as a better way of thinking and talking about it. The channels can be internal or external. The idea of having your own media channel has got to be appealing to a wide range of organisations that currently have to fight for media space. I think NGOs in Australia will really start to understand the potential during 2006. I did some research for a client during the year which twigged me to just how important NGOs have been over the past 20 years in changing the way political debates are conducted and the way information gets fed into those debates. New, ridiculously cheap, media channels will drive NGO importance to new levels. Political parties have found it difficult to compete with NGOs for sometime in terms of recruiting and retaining members, they are going to find it even harder if they don't start to lose some of their 'command and control' heritages and start having discussions with voters rather than just polling and glad-handing them.
6. Fierce competition will drive technological change at an unprecedented pace. Can it get any faster? You betcha. Just imagine the pressure that must be driving the boardrooms and management corridors of the big multi-billion enterprises like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Apple. In different ways, they are all trying to eat each other's business. Microsoft has a lot on the line in 2006, it has to stay ahead of these competitors or its going to get real scary up in Redmond. And my money says they won't give up without a helluva fight. I remember hearing Dave Winer say that the exciting thing about this period of technological change is that you switch on your computer every morning fully expecting that the world will have changed again overnight. We're going to see a lot more of that.
7. The record companies will fight back. So far they have defended the beach but now its time to strike out in a new direction. I reckon they will start doing their own podcasts, targeting specialised markets. Doing that they can bypass radio and indie podcasting with one fell swoop. Podcasting will let them market direct to their customers. No doubt there's lots wrong with this idea and maybe they have got lots more better ideas on the table but they'll do something big before the year's out. If they don't we'll see a lot more independent artists selling on the Internet and being promoted through podcasts, as well as the growth of small labels.
8. VOIP will get a whole lot bigger. Skype showed the way and now with Yahoo getting into the space, the market will expand. Bad news for telcos like Telstra. Extremely low cost phone calls will be another huge change in the way we think about communications. VOIP makes a lot of sense for mums and dads with friends and relatives spread throughout the world, as well as business users. And once you can get a reasonably-priced handset that allows you to connect through your wireless router and therefore use your skype or similar without being attached to a computer then wow!
9. The number of conferences focusing on social media in Australia will accelerate. This is not a prediction folks, I know this to be true. People are 'looking into it' and starting to think 'this is something we have to be across'. And the professional conference producers, as well as many public and private sector organisations, are onto this thirst for knowledge.
10. Websites that don't offer feeds will be the new Internet 'tombstones'. Imagine actually visiting a website to find out 'what's new'.
11. RSS will become ubiquitous. Its inclusion in browsers and email programs like Yahoo and gmail will rapidly introduce the (online) masses to the life-changing experience of a web that comes to you.