Technically Speaking

While Ron Paul has the vote online, he just can’t seem to muster up enough voters to actually get to the voting booths to cast the ballot. It’s quite obvious that the experiment over on TC called TC primaries is just another example of how I have always stated - “If you can’t impress the people of Potosi, MO, you just don’t get it.”

While a good majority of the people I talk with daily work and make our living in this web 2.0 bubble as some call it, there is a whole group of people out there that do not get it. Case in point, last night’s NH primaries. According to the TC Primaries, it should have been a walk over by Obama and Ron Paul. In fact, we should (according to online stats) see Ron Paul take on Barack Obama for the title of President of the United States in November 2008. The sad reality it just might be Hillary Clinton vs Mitt Romney or John McCain for the November election. Those will be our choices. Sad isn’t it?

The fact remains, just because some of us make our living online, the realities of the real world still out weigh online decisions. Now the good part is that the viable part of the economy right now is online. While the real world job growth is nil, the online jobs are sprouting up everywhere. While there are many facts that point to a downturn in ‘08 for online growth, no one is out partying like it’s 1999 at this time, and the company I keep knows how to keep it real.

A likely reason for the blinded by online polls and followings is the fact that what we believe in doesn’t translate to the offline world. It’s almost like an us vs them type mentality. When in reality, what goes on online isn’t like Vegas. It needs to somehow translate into offline viability. Right now, the 2008 Presidential elections appears to be good measuring stick of “what is real” and “what is reality in the real world”.

I will be attending a conference on Feb 4th in San Francisco. It’s called “Customer Service is the New Marketing” Summit. Now there is a concept, customer service. What has killed the offline world is just that; no customer service. Now with my above statements above about how the online world is becoming the most viable economy going today, we really need to focus on the customers and customer service.

If you are in the bay area that week, I’d like to meet you in person so you can put a face to face with me. I’m as real as I can be, and yes, I work for Lookery as well as Lending Club. Two online startups that have done quite well. I’m one of the lucky ones, as I happen to have found two stable companies with great ideas.

Technically Speaking, drop me a line if you would like to meet me in SF in early Feb.

Almost too late, and in some countries it already is 2008. Let’s see how I do this year.

1. Advertising online - Now that it’s quite apparent the only viable economy in these times are online, most of the advertising you see in 2008 will be online. Mobile and video advertising will command big bucks, and traditional advertising via banner ads will continue strong.

2. Censorship - Censorship of the internet by countries, states, cities will be a big issue in the early part of 2008. While it’s privacy that everyone is concerned about, about the middle of the year we’ll see Silicon Valley’s finest entrepreneur’s take advantage of this. I’m sure we will see quite a few new companies making millions by year’s end on this.

3. Social Networks - Just like 2007, social networks will continue another year of healthy growth. Not so much the big dogs, but more like smaller more niche social clubs will be formed. The big sites will continue their steady growth, and will continue to make big money via advertising.

4. Less Blogs - There will be your major blogs, and the minor bloggers will bow out when they can’t seem to make money online like some of the big dogs. This will result in better coverage of emerging technology and more money for the upper tier of bloggers.

5. Television - Will rebound. Crazy you say? But with the push to HD that is mandated here in the US by 2009, there will be a big push for new tv sales in 2008. Now as far as the industry goes, it’s dead. Stick a fork in ‘em. Most of the content will move online by mid-year, and the content left on television will have a hard time making it since most of the advertising money will follow online.

6. Newspapers - Most of them will began to cease actual production of black ink on recycled paper by year’s end. Most if not all will dedicate their reporting to the online versions. Near the end of the year, most will be touting it as their company going green.

7. Green - Will continue to remain strong throughout 2008. As noted above, with newspapers ceasing to put out a printed version, other companies will follow online. If the product can be produced better online (such as news updated as news happens - newspapers) - it will come online. The money will be abundant online in 2008 and many companies will have no option if they want to survive. In factoring in all the options, the corporate moves will have green in mind when they make major moves.

Technically Speaking, I think I put up too many predictions last year. It’s been a fantastic year for me personally. As many of you long time readers remember, this blog started here on this domain on January 1, 2007. It’s been one full year now here. Happy New Year everyone and be safe so that you can come by and read my occasional ramblings in 2008. cruises

It has been quite a year for myself personally, but now is the time to sit back and take a look at my 2007 predictions. Written exactly one year ago on my old blog (free wordpress) before I moved here to the present location.

Let’s review each one:

1. There will be a new video content delivery system that will debut in 2007 that will blow away what is currently out there. This will not “kill” YouTube or any of the other video services, but it will be more like a CDN that is on steroids. This CDN will be the killer and talked about place in early 2007, and will be given many awards come this time next year.

My Review: Didn’t happen obviously, but let’s hope that my insider is still working hard on this.

2. Social Networks will consolidate, but still experience huge growth. Sites such as the one I posted about this morning will become the norm. People will be attracted to social networks in 2007 even more. The difference will be that social networks will become more specialized such as Shuzak (for programmers, mathematics, etc…) and places like MySpace will be the central network point. People will start to realize that they will need centralized points such as Spokeo, as they will want to join only networks with distinct focus.

My Review: Social Networks continued to grow by leaps and bounds.

3. AOL and Yahoo will merge by end of 1st quarter 2007; maybe even sooner.

My Review: Didn’t happen, AOL survived, Yahoo survived a CEO change and both are still separate entities.

4. Super Bowl Sunday (February 4th, 2007) will be 50/50 Beer ads and Web 2.0 ads and new startup ads. Anyone happen to have $2.5 million to loan Rex Dixon? I’d love to do a 15-30 second ad (whatever $2.5 million will by this year for SB Sunday ads!)

My Review: Super Bowl Sunday was so long ago, I really forget the ads by now. I do remember vaguely that there wasn’t as many startup companies (unless you count the cameo by Digg’s Kevin Rose) this past year.

5. RSS and Widgets will have a nice marriage in 2007. We are already seeing allot of that, but I think the two will marry up nicely and be more abundant in 2007.

My Review: Slow process but widgets are starting to evolve. More probably coming in 2008.

6. WebOS – I can’t forget my favorite 2007 item! WebOS – maybe not GoogleOS, but I think WebOS will make great strides in 2007.

My Review: Wrong again. WebOS hardly made a whisper in 2007.

7. Television as we know it will really start to come to the end of its rope in 2007. We already are seeing it, but 2007 will accelerate TV shifting its focus to the internet ten times faster then it did this past year.

My Review: Finally got one right! This is happening, and the writer’s strike has really accelerated this movement.

8. John Edwards. You don’t think other candidates will follow the leader? If they don’t, they will be forgotten before the fires in Iowa even start.

My Review: Another one right. I think we all saw the movement online for this election. Don’t need to look any further than Ron Paul’s campaign to find out the reason why the internet is going to soon take over mainstream media for all elections. Raising the amount of money his campaign has says one thing - He has support, and a lot of it.

9. Amanda Congdon was not a fluke. There will be more internet personality’s hitting the mainstream with nice old world contracts in 2007. Maybe Rex Dixon? Hey, I have to dream!

My Review: 50/50 on this. Amanda was a fluke sort of, as now the shift and focus is off the mainstream. There were a lot of YouTube/video stars this year. Amanda was a fluke in the sense that no other blogger or vlogger has been signed to a major network. The thing is, the major networks are in trouble unless they focus online. As far as myself, January 15th on the local news; never saw that one coming! It was a one time shot, and for something that I never thought I’d have to talk about on local news 10pm top story news.

10. The catch all – there will be one or two items that we NEVER saw coming. You can count that if none of the above 9 predictions for 2007 come true; I at least covered “my you know what” with this last one!

My Review: I should have just said that for the first 6 items!

11. Search and Aggregators - such as Megite, Techmeme, Tailrank, and search as in Collarity, Snap, Wikiasari, and even Google search will become bigger forces in 2007.

My Review: Search is still big, and other aggregators have come on the scene. I think this is ongoing as we go into 2008.

I also had 3 personal predictions or goals for 2007.

1. Connected more – as in starting yesterday, whenever I can, I will be available via Meebo for chat. If I post myself as “busy” or “msg me” – I’m serious. I will respond when I can. That’s what the status thing is for!

My Review: I ditched the Meebo widget in a few months, but you can still find me on Meebo as well as Skype daily. So yes, I’m available.

2. More focused on getting new items when at all possible. If I can’t get it new, I will still try to put a better spin on it.

My Review: At the start of the year, I think I did pretty well. As I started to gravitate more towards #3 below, I started to fail.

3. I truly am hoping 2007 will be the end of the day gig for Rex Dixon. That remains to be seen, but as I stated above (sort of) “Is it time to invest in Rex Dixon while I’m still cheap?”

My Review: All I can say is Lookery and Lending Club. Both jobs beat any day gig I ever had.

Technically Speaking, I’ll try to throw some darts at the wall and do some predictions for 2008 in a bit. senior living