It’s that time of the year again. The new year is approaching rapidly, and I’m a little bit stunned how time is flying. 2008 was a year full of exciting, dramatic and tragic events – also for the Internet business. I am sure that I’m not the only one who wonders what 2009 has in store for us.

I browsed through the web and collected the most interesting Internet related predictions for the upcoming year:

- Mediapost: Digital Will Impact Five Key Areas Next Year
Great list on ‘Marketing Daily’. My favorites:

• Conversation is king in 2009 because Web presence alone no longer is enough for individuals or brand.
• The Semantic Web will create more sophisticated, intuitive, refined ways to filter information and services.
• Savvy companies and brand marketers are starting to trust consumers and enlist their assistance in product design and development.
• Another notable trend is the transmission effect, or the speed with which conversations and content spread everywhere like rapid-fire– beyond the reach of editorial controls, sites or institutions.

- Junta42: 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
Interesting predictions of the Junta42 community. Among others:

• Twitter will be officially mainstream, but here will be a backlash against company Twitter accounts.
• Social Media Marketing will become a more mainstream approach.
• Combining traditional media with electronic media will increase.
• More brands will developing a personality or a persona to represent the core values of the company. 2009 will be the year of the personality.
• Americans are showing more and more interest in RSS.
• There will be a “gold rush” for social media as new frontier marketing platform.

- Emarketer: Predictions for 2009
Great statistical insights by Senior Analyst David Hallermann and several collegues:

• Search marketing spending will grow by 14.9% in 2009, to $12.3 billion. (Good news: Search marketing is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant.)
• Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million.
• Total US Internet ad spending will increase to $25.7 billion in 2009, an 8.9% growth rate.
• Multicultural marketing will gain intensity online. More African-Americans and Hispanics are going online, through their PCs and their mobile phones, and marketers will follow.
• Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4% in 2009—the first full year to feel the impact of the economic crisis.
• E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.
• Advertising in the traditional media will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be some consolidation.

- Search Insider: Search Trends To Watch in 2009
Great thoughts by the sharp mind of David Berkovitz. Three predictions which stood out for me:

• More and more consumers reach marketers through intermediary properties, likeblogs, social networks, photo sharing sites, Twitter, Wikipedia, and countless other social sites. As a result, marketers have to shift their mindset from optimizing their Web site to optimizing their Web presence.
• This fall, YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second-largest search engine. Marketers have to adapt their strategies to n these nontraditional search sources.
• Search will shift even more beyond the PC. This includes not only mobile devices, but also television models (delivering a hybrid TV-Web experience) and GPS systems in the car (with inbuilt restaurant, attraction etc. search function). Marketers need to reach the target audience on these devices.

Other articles and blog posts with predictions for the upcoming year:

- FolioMag: 117 Magazine And Media Predictions for 2009

- ReadWriteWeb: Social Media in 2009: Our Predictions And Desires

- Fast Company: 8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009

- Vator News: Consumer Internet Predictions for 2009

- Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions for 2009

- CSM Watch: Technology Predictions for 2009

- Web Video Unleashed: 9 Online Video Predictions for 2009

- Appirio: Top 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Plus: On Twitter you’ll find a great list of Enterprise 2.0 predictions. They are aggregated via the hashtag #e20predictions. Add your own prediction!

If you’re interested in general what will happen with the web not only in 2009, but in next 10 or 20 years, you need to read the report “The Future Of The Internet III” by the Pew Internet & American Life Project” (PDF version). Three interesting takeaways:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Any thoughts on this? Or did you find any other great posts or articles with internet related predictions which should be added to this list? Let me know!

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