The prediction business going hot and heavy
Jason Calacanis is the latest to jump in with his 2006 predictions.
Didn’t come true: #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18. That’s 11 out of 19 items. Not a good track record.
I’ll probably leave the prediction business to John Battelle, who has done a much better job at it so far.
If I were to predict something for 2006, though, it would be similar to what Steve Rubel is focusing on: that blog search simply needs to get better.
Oh, and for a fun little touch, Nathan did a little movie of me and Steve Rubel and Mini-Microsoft. Totally fictionalized, of course!
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December 23rd, 2005 at 7:37 am
It’s not about what comes true though it’s about generating discussion.
My opinion would be predict away.
(it seems you have lost some weight in the video ;-) ?)
December 23rd, 2005 at 7:43 am
More Predictions For 2006
If my solitary prediction for 2006 isn’t good enough for you like to start at Robert Scoble’s blog as a jump-off point… Or, see predictions that have recently been blogged via Technorati.
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December 23rd, 2005 at 7:47 am
My prediction for 2006 is that at the end of 2006, many bloggers and columnists will make predictions about 2007, many of which will not come true.
My prediction is thus far the most likely to come true of any I’ve seen ;)
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:05 am
as a former Gartner analyst let me share how the really good market predictions are made…
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2005/12/the_delicate_ar.html
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:16 am
scoble i have no idea how you manage over 500 feeds. you need a personal memeorandum to sort thru all the cross linking.
rss was a turn on too me, then i got mentally burned when i started subscribing like a wild animal.
between digg.com theinquirer.net and tech.memeorandum i am covered now for all my content needs and can be sane again.
someone needs to make something that sorts my subscribed content and gives it to me in a more managable way. text analysis, link analysis, all that needs to be done because the amount of content out there now is just too much.
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:20 am
#5 could be true, depending on how you define “interesting.” Everyone is talking about XBox 360.
But I’m curious about #13, which you consider to have been correct: Which “major product” did MS open source in 2005?
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:58 am
Scoble Predicted Katrina!
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:10 am
[...] I was quite embarresed by my attempts to create a movie (with “The Movies”) about bloggers, but since Scoble and Steve Rubel seemed to find it funny, I want to do another one. Which well-known blogger should I add next? And what would you like them to discuss? I’ve already got another outlandish topic ready, just need some news to discuss. [...]
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:27 am
Number 11 came true multiple times though (Katrina, Rita, Pakistan earthquake, etc, etc).
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:50 am
Robert, I love how you keep trying to will a mainstream market for the Tablet PC into existence!
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Most people still don’t need the ability to draw directly on the screen, especially not when you have to make sacrifices in cost, dimensions, and/or space to do it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s very useful in some markets, but only some.
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:03 pm
13) Microsoft will open source a major product. My guess is it’ll be Train Simulator since there’s no hope that Train Simulator will ever be a runaway success like Halo 2, but Train Simulator still has hundreds of thousands of devoted fans.
Ok, so what major product did Microsoft Open Source? I am trying to think really hard here, but it evades me…
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Jonathan, I agree that whether a Tablet PC makes sense for someone depends on what they want to do with it.
As a developer, I like to sketch out ideas before I implement them. And I prefer keeping handwritten notes, annotated screenshots, and the like while I’m coding or working through a problem. So the built-in digitizer-part of the Tablet PC fits well for how I work.
I know my use of a Tablet PC is not mainstream though.
But all I have to do is watch my niece curled up in a ball on the couch–Tablet PC in hand–playing online games and IMing her friends or my nephew using his Tablet PC to take notes in college to know that the form factor is much more mainstream than how I use it.
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:42 pm
#5 is certainly true…Microsoft is much more interesting now. (XBox 360, anyone?)
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Great Scoble Movie
haha, had me in stitches I tell ya’ll
videocast
Microsoft is certainly….. noooooooooooooooooooooo
…
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:33 pm
Number 2. Were you serious? It sounds like you are too caught up in blog fog to understand reality.
December 23rd, 2005 at 2:23 pm
One prediction of mine, already happened…
NBC U takes controlling stake in MSNBC
Deal allows conglom to take full control within 2 years. After years of losses and hundreds of millions invested, Microsoft laid the groundwork to exit the cable news business by selling a controlling stake in 24-hour news channel MSNBC to NBC Universal.
Vista and Office 12 will be hard upsells, nothing major until 2008. Xbox will further waste billions (Console Wars, the 2006 theme), ERP won’t get a foothold (Dynamics rebranding a future trainwreck). Live will prove to be just half-baked Ozzie Fuzzy Wuzzy’isms. SQL/Exchange/Server 2003 will see serious pickup, a major saving grace. MFST will whip milk into ice cream, trying to get anything to stick, outside of legacy OS and Office, but nothing will take (it never does). Serious cut into cash hoard. MFST stock won’t move much at all (for the entire year). Basically a do-nothing year, as MFST lumbers to toss Vista out of the plane, and develop an ‘ecosystem’ around such. And oh, Tablet will fail to get any traction, for yet another year. MFST will overhaul their Marketing, reorg. serious. And the fluffy MFST bloggers will continue on, as usual, in the Web 2.0 bubble baths.
December 23rd, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Christopher Coulter, sound’s like your having a bad day ;).
December 23rd, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Phil, I missed #13, although in hindsight moving Office File Formats to an open format comes close.
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Maybe a good thing that you aren’t doing a prediction this year…
16 out of 18 wrong as I read it, and 2 are dead-obvious “the sun will rise tomorrow” pointlessly useless.
3) “Several more people will get fired FOR blogging.” - Duh, and sometime next year it will rain. Pointless prediction.
7) “Three things will join…” Enough with the convergence mashup rot. Nope. Wrong.
8) “HDTV. It will be big. ger.” No, not even close to matching the hype. Depends on how you define ‘bigger’ though.
9) “RSS will go mainstream.” Not even close, for hard numbers only look to Pew Research, saying only 5% know and use. Mainstream is usually defined as 51%.
11)13) “Microsoft will open source a major product.” - Define “major”…token-pointless one-off’s and faux open-formats (Office) don’t count.
15)
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:23 pm
My new prediction: Christopher Coulter will not say anything nice in 2006. :-)
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Blog comment monster ate my post…but the “homework” is fine.
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:35 pm
My prediction:
Ballmer will admit to being a ceteceophile before Microsoft truly open sources something under either a GPL or BSDL license.
December 23rd, 2005 at 6:39 pm
#7? Is there a cell phone with a hard drive and Skye capability? Or did I misinterpret that one?
#13? Which product did Microsoft open source.
It would be cool if you did a blow-by-blow recap of each of your predictions that did (and didn’t) come true for those of us who missed stuff.
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:12 pm
Prediction. Chistopher Coulter will never answer why he forged emails to The Register to slam Robert Scoble http://thomashawk.com/2005/12/andrew-orlowski-on-moral.html
Why don’t you answer Mr. Hawk’s questions?
Chistopher Coulter’s not so secret blog is located at http://globosphere.blogspot.com Too bad you were exposed Chistopher Coulter Mr. Antiblog!
December 24th, 2005 at 12:21 am
Q: Why don’t you answer Mr. Hawk’s questions?
A: Same reason why I don’t answer stalking conspiracy-theory UFO Project Paperclip nutheads. As they say never wrestle with a pig, you will only dirty yourself and the pig likes it.
Exposed? I advertised and marketed it.
December 26th, 2005 at 8:16 am
I predict that in 2006, Robert will, at least twice, read something that someone from Microsoft said, and rather than contacting that person and getting their side of it, fire off a rant/flame that leaves that person’s ass hanging in the wind.
Three days later, when other people outside of Microsoft bother to do the basic investigative work that he should have done, he’ll do it, and try to sound contrite about it.
Of course, if it’s Ballmer, he’ll “not want to say anything until he has all the facts in”, showing that it’s only when his career is in imminent danger that he goes for “correct” over “first”.
December 28th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Still no answer to the open source question. Office XML isn’t an application and some question if it really is open (other companies worked on it, independent peer review, no hidden gotcha’s).
January 8th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
[...] John Battelle (Searchblog) who did a far better job than Robert Scoble in 2005. Will he repeat that success in his predictions ? [...]
February 20th, 2006 at 6:10 am
[...] Quelques prédicateurs célèbres : Dave Winner Jason Calacanis Scobleizer Chris Pirillo [...]
March 11th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
My 2006 Predictions
Since everyone else is doing it…
1) Intel will make a comeback in the CPU arena when they finally ditch NetBurst and start shipping Pentium-M based desktop processors with 64-bit support. They may even integrate a memory controller before the e…