I’ll be seeing John Battelle later this afternoon and will try to get him on video about how well his predictions for 2007 went (for the past few years I’ve enjoyed his predictions for the next year more than any other blogger/journalist).
Here, let’s do a little scorecard for John based on how well his predictions did this year.
1. Right. Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6 billion and bought a sliver of Facebook. Negative points for trying to predict that AOL would go public.
2. Wrong. I don’t remember anyone saying that Web 2.0 bubble has burst, just that there is one.
3. Right. YouTube now has its videos on Google’s main search engine. Look for “Martin Luther King” for instance and you see his “I have a dream” speech.
4. Right. Google’s video ads have just started getting going and are far from a home run.
5. Right. Yahoo did not regain its luster, but did replace the CEO.
6. Wrong. eBay hasn’t made major changes to its executive leadership.
7. Right. Amazon has continued kicking butt in the web service space. Negative points for saying that the market will punish it. If anything the market has been supportive.
8. Mostly wrong. Wallstrip was acquired. Several others are on the block. But haven’t seen major content moves unless I’m missing something. I think John should extend this prediction to 2008 because I know several media companies are getting ready to acquire content plays.
9. Neutral. I’m seeing a LOT more traffic moving to RSS, but that’s a trend that hasn’t hit advertising in a big way yet. New metrics are definitely coming out all the time, though, to help advertisers track usage on AJAX, video, and RSS-centric sites.
10. Right. My blog definitely needs a redesign now that we have Twitter, Facebook, streaming video, etc.
11. Right. Facebook screwed up the privacy/trust issue.
12. Right. Google has gotten heck in the mainstream media.
13. Right. Mobile finally arrived in the US market with the iPhone.
Damn, mostly right. It’ll be an interesting morning.
Scobleizer 
Pretty impressive. Looking forward to the video.
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Pretty impressive. Looking forward to the video.
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He’s a smart guy. I got some talk time with him earlier this year when his Federated Media brought one of my sites (www.coasterbuzz.com) on to the platform. I think he has a fairly complete view of the bigger picture most of the time.
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He’s a smart guy. I got some talk time with him earlier this year when his Federated Media brought one of my sites (www.coasterbuzz.com) on to the platform. I think he has a fairly complete view of the bigger picture most of the time.
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“6. Wrong. eBay hasn’t made major changes to its executive leadership.”
They removed the president of Skype, Henry Gomez, and the CEO/co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom. Does that qualify?
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“6. Wrong. eBay hasn’t made major changes to its executive leadership.”
They removed the president of Skype, Henry Gomez, and the CEO/co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom. Does that qualify?
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more important than changing the executive leadership is changing the bureaucratic culture at eBay.
i’m easily swayed that Meg / others may choose to step aside in the near future to pursue other interests, however i’m less convinced any such changes will lead to a cultural shakeup that would enable them to move more quickly.
eBay does one thing right that Yahoo doesn’t — they have a big open checkbook to buy the innovation they’re not driving internally. but that’s still no excuse for not doing more to allow intrapreneurship at the mothership (or the satellite subsidiaries).
there’s still plenty of fire in the belly over there, and plenty of opportunity in the platforms of eBay, PayPal, & Skype… but the prison bars of powerpoint and teleconferences are holding a thousand flowers hostage.
sniff, sniff.
– dave “paypal developer network” mcclure
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more important than changing the executive leadership is changing the bureaucratic culture at eBay.
i’m easily swayed that Meg / others may choose to step aside in the near future to pursue other interests, however i’m less convinced any such changes will lead to a cultural shakeup that would enable them to move more quickly.
eBay does one thing right that Yahoo doesn’t — they have a big open checkbook to buy the innovation they’re not driving internally. but that’s still no excuse for not doing more to allow intrapreneurship at the mothership (or the satellite subsidiaries).
there’s still plenty of fire in the belly over there, and plenty of opportunity in the platforms of eBay, PayPal, & Skype… but the prison bars of powerpoint and teleconferences are holding a thousand flowers hostage.
sniff, sniff.
– dave “paypal developer network” mcclure
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I disagree that He got Yahoo right. Putting Jerry Yang as CEO is not necessarily a good move and only time will tell. And, I also disagree that he got Google right. He said that their founders would catch hell. This simply did NOT happen.
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I disagree that He got Yahoo right. Putting Jerry Yang as CEO is not necessarily a good move and only time will tell. And, I also disagree that he got Google right. He said that their founders would catch hell. This simply did NOT happen.
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