Web 2.0 trends for 2008

I have been asked to predict what Web applications will look like in 2008. It's a fool's errand. It brings to mind the predictive science fiction of the '50s and '60s. Some things the prognosticators got right: space travel, nuclear power, computers. But no one predicted the Web or the massive social change it would drive.

It's the same with predicting what will happen on the Web in the near future. A few things we can be sure of, but there's almost certainly going to be some breakout invention or service that takes us by surprise.

I apologize in advance for missing it.

More hypertargeted advertising
On most Web apps, you pay for the service with the partial attention you give to the advertising running on it. And the advertising keeps getting more valuable--certainly to the advertisers, and potentially to users. It gets that way by being hypertargeted. You get ads based on what you do online, where you are (see Google's new cell phone location service that doesn't rely on GPS), who you're friends with, and so on.

There will be abuses of personal data, like the flap over Facebook's "Beacon" advertising program that tracks user purchases even when they are not on the site. In 2008, advertisers and site publishers will try to find the balance, but they'll continue to push the boundaries of privacy in order to send users more highly specific advertising and marketing messages.

Webware pushing software aside
You can be productive today without owning desktop software. Apps suites such as Google Docs, Zoho, and ThinkFree continue to close in on Microsoft's dominance of productivity software. Already millions of people already get their e-mail from online services instead of using e-mail applications.

In 2008, we will likely see the emergence of a market supporting the zero-software. Already there are computers that are just glorified Web browsers. More of these will be built and installed--for people on tight budgets, in offices, in schools, and so on. This movement makes old folks (like me) nervous, because we don't like the idea of our most important and personal data being stored on the Web instead of on our own local hard drives, but younger users are going to become accustomed to this.

On the other hand...

The rise of hybrid apps
While many software applications will migrate to the Web, we're also going to see an increasing number of Web apps migrate to the desktop. If you want to get a rich, interactive eBay experience, for example, you might run an Air or Prism-based app that gives you more control over an auction than eBay's site. Currently, many people who use the nanoblog services Twitter and Pownce do so from desktop-based apps. Other sites and services--Amazon, Flickr, and so forth--will release offline options to their online services. Key to the growth of hybrid apps is the availability of programmers' tools to manage intermittently connected users. Google Gears make become the de facto toolkit for these apps; Adobe's Air platform may also pick this up.

Community is king
With so many unpaid bloggers and writers on the Web, the Web aphorism that "content is king" is losing its meaning, since we're all kings. Influence, instead, goes to the sites with the most engaged communities. Digg tells tech users what's popular on the Web, and what they do online changes the fortunes of content sites; blogs become powerful when communities begin to interact with (not just read) the writers on the sites.

Semantic search
Search engines are finally learning how real users think. While popularity-based engines (such as Google) work well, there's more potential in engines that go beyond link analysis to parsing the meaning of pages. Powerset is one of the most anticipated upcoming semantic search engines, but you can see semantic search at work, on a much smaller scale, in smaller projects such as the wine-aficionado site Snooth; it speaks only wine lingo, but it "understands" wine terms to correctly match "big" with "fruity," for example.

More start-ups start
One of the biggest reasons we're seeing so much innovation on the Web right now is that it's never been easier to start a company than it is today. Application platforms such as Ruby on Rails and Ajax make it possible for a lone developer or a small team to quickly develop useful and good-looking online applications. The Web makes it easy to get these apps onto the screens of millions of users without paying for software distribution of any kind. And should the applications become very popular, Web service hosting companies such as Amazon, with its suite of on-demand services, can provide great deals on reliable infrastructure.

Sites and services that make their core functions available to other sites, not just users, also encourage developers to remix, or mash up, applications. This is leading to a quick evolution of online apps, as many developers add small features or improvements to existing products--but they do it incredibly quickly.

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