Reading The Online Tea Leaves For 2010
As this is my first column for 2010, I thought now would be an appropriate time to offer my own digital predictions for 2010. So, here’s my best guess at what will be coming down the virtual pike for businesses in the next 12 months.
Twittered Out
2009 was definitely the year of Twitter. If you recall, during the first four months of 2009, there was a Twitter story nearly every day in mainstream media, as journalists discovered the microblogging tool.
Over the year, I heard more and more business owners wondering about Twitter and whether they should bother to learn how to use it. I also heard a lot of people get downright angry at the online site. It seemed to embody everything that was wrong with social networking and its emphasis on self-promotion and self-obsession.
In my opinion Twitter has definitely peaked. I see it in the number of followers the Worcester Business Journal has on the site. It has reached a plateau, and I can see that many former obsessive users in the business community have grown bored with the site and its 140-word updates. I expect Twitter will recede into the hedges of the information superhighway, a place for only the most diehard social networking fiends.
Social Convergence
One of the biggest frustrations nearly every online maven has today is the plethora of sites we need to keep fresh. Once you’ve updated your Facebook page, you have to quickly move onto your work blog and then your personal blog. And don’t forget your colleagues at LinkedIn!
There are a few tools the help you update some of these social networking sites all at once (HelloTxt is one, another is TwitterFeed), but I haven’t found one that really does the job well. In the end, I think we’re going to move to one, all encompassing social networking site. If we don’t I know my head’s going to explode, and I suspect I’m not alone.
Of all the sites, Facebook seems the best positioned to become this central social networking hub. It’s already very simple to upload different types of media (text, photos, video, etc.) and businesses are increasingly setting up pages on the site. If I had to bet, I’d say Facebook is the place where people will turn for a one-stop social networking experience. So, now might be a good time to take down those photos of you at the frat party. You wouldn’t want your biggest client to get the wrong idea about you.
Paid Search
I don’t ever click on paid search items. You know the ones I’m talking about right? On search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, there are results that show up at the top or along the right hand side of the page that say “sponsored results” or something to that effect. Those results are paid for and because of that, I don’t trust them. So, I never click on them and I suspect many Gen Y-types are the same way.
Now, paid search is big business. Of the $5.4 billion spent on Internet advertising during the second quarter of 2009, 47 percent was spend on search, according to a report from the Internet Advertising Bureau.
But I suspect the jig is going to be up for paid search sooner rather than later. Because the younger demographic surfing the Internet today is suspicious of these links, I predict that paid search will begin to decline in 2010. That’s a bold prediction, but I think it’s inevitable. Sorry Google!
Online Video
I’ve begun to notice a greater acceptance in the business world of multimedia. In fact, I see business owners demanding video for their sites. With video cameras coming down in price (you can buy a decent digital video recorder for under $100 nowadays), I think 2010 will be the year of video for businesses.
I wrote in this space about a workshop on video blogging for businesses that I attended. I was struck by just how easy it is for any business, regardless of the industry, to set up a YouTube channel and begin producing informational video clips. I don’t think I’m the only one coming to this realization, and I might be late to the party. But the trend is there, and video is where it’s at for online marketing this year.
Got news for our Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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