What will make a move in 2008 and what will die? These are my first predictions and as you can understand im not too sure which will end up being true and which will not eventuate. If you have anything to add make sure you add a comment and see if you can get it on the list.
- Microsoft will start purchasing companies as Steve Bullmer predicted and one the key acquisitions will be SixApart.
- Gmail will move from the online space to also be available offline.
- The mobile web and applications will become more mainstream and more companies and products will just be based for mobiles.
- Zoho will be purchased. I dont think it will be either Google or Microsoft.
- Technorati will be heading towards the Dead Pool.
- Digg will be sold but I think for only about $200 million and not the $300 million they are looking for.
- AOLs Platform A will launch and will really shake up the industry. It will offer a great third option to Google and Microsoft.
- Hybrid Applications will become the norm. Microsoft will be move their Office applications online and compete will Google and Zoho. While Google will move their applications offline.
- More Ad network marketplaces will launch and start to grab more of the market and transparency between publishers and advertisers will become a lot less.
- A new social network will launch and quickly compete with Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. This social network will be invite only and will have some very exclusive features.
- Napster will slowly be running out of money and wishing they had changed their structure (especially towards DRMs), soon to be in the Dead Pool.
From everyone here at Crenk, I would like to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
This past weekend, I spent a few hours surfing through YouTube for user generated video content. Apart from watching funny videos of people doing the Soldier Boy dance, I also use the site to check for technology related videos. Most recently was the video broadcast of Google’s 2007 Analyst Day. The event was attended by many analysts interested in finding out what the company had in store for the future years to come.
I have always admired Google because of the way they revolutionized how we behave on the web. Consumers are constantly jumping for joy when Google rolls out a new product because all they require to use these products is to sit through a few contextual advertisements. Some people think their ultimate goal is to offer every imaginable service in return for showing ads to users who wish to use their suite of products.
My question has always been how they plan on monetizing YouTube? My favorite joy when surfing through Youtube is that I can spend hours on the site without seeing any obtrusive advertisement. I understand Google makes its money from displaying text ads next to relevant content, but I can’t help but wonder how they plan on duplicating the same model when it comes to the number one video sharing site.
I think they can get away with displaying non obtrusive ads on proprietary content of big TV stations, but spreading these ads to user generated content will definitely rub a lot of people the wrong way. My only solution thus far is to start off by capping the number of videos every user can view and advising them that some text or other form of rich media advertisement may be displayed once the cap has been exceeded. This strategy in my opinion will slowly sensitize their users with respect to seeing ads next to video content.
Rackspace(R) Managed Hosting today warns that the record increase in online spending this Christmas will put unforeseen pressure on website infrastructures. Consumers are looking to get the best last minute deals shopping in the convenience of their own home or at work, rather than on the high street for the highly coveted top sellers such as the Nintendo Wii, and the recent rush of retro comebacks such as Transformers, the Spice Girls and Led Zeppelin.
Recent research, carried out by the Social Issues Research Centre and Rackspace Managed Hosting showed that 62% of respondents rated high speed as the most important factor in an ideal site. Therefore organisations must review their web hosting requirements to pre-empt loss of business due to a poorly performing website.
Fabio Torlini, Marketing Director, Rackspace, commented, “This festive season will see the heaviest levels of online traffic yet as discerning customers scour the Web to get the best value for money. In this exceedingly competitive online marketplace, where profit margins are at its tightest and the health of the overall retail economy uncertain, the difference between closing or losing a sale could literally be a matter of seconds. The slightest delay in navigating a website could cause a customer to make the purchase at a competing site – a situation online retailers can ill afford at a time when the shopping frenzy is at its peak.”
Shoppers have already demonstrated their online spending power as over £750,000 was spent in under a minute on online purchases according to payment processing company, Retail Decisions, underpinning reports from eDigitalResearch that online sales for the last three months of this year will hit a record £17.6bn, up 82 per cent on 2006.
The auction for the Edgeio assets has finished and Looksmart have walked away with all the assets for $280,000. Patrick Chapman talked to Mike Arrington about the purchase yesterday and said it still too early to know what Looksmart will do with the Edgeio assets.
I have read a lot of articles in the last few weeks about Edgeio and how there company was destined to fail (mainly from all the traffic coming from Techcrunch), but I think the technology is quite good and the idea was very sound but execution was quite poor. Im glad Looksmart has taken over the assets and im interested to see where they can fit them in to their portfolio.
The voting in the first ever Open Web Awards is over and Vizu has validated the results. We look forward to meeting all the winners and nominees at the Open Web Awards live event on January 10th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. A final thanks to our blog partners, sponsors and most importantly everyone who nominated and voted – in excess of 250,000 votes and nominations were cast!
PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Without further ado, here are the 13 winners in each respective category of the People’s Choice component of the awards. These were nominated and voted on by readers of Mashable and partner blogs.
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
Applications and Widgets
Social News and Social Bookmarking
Social Search
Sports and Fitness
Photo Sharing
Video Sharing
Start Pages
Places and Events
Music
Social Shopping
Mobile
Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
GoLark is an events and places website. It is similar to Upcoming.org, which is now a Yahoo service. GoLark provides information on concerts, museum exhibits, lectures and shows. The site works in a similar way to Digg, in which GoLark allows the community to submit events and then you can “hype it up” to get it to the top of the tree.
GoLark also has a great search function which is visible on all pages in the left column. It has a slide ruler in a few different categories which allows a user to find events in his or her local area quickly and easily.
The site is so simple to use and can actually be very useful, but due to the lack of users and events it is very hard to for the site to build moment, basically a catch 22. Events are need to bring in the users and users are needed to bring in the events. However, it is definitely worth joining GoLark to simply keep up on events in your local area.
I’m very pleased to announce that Ade Gbodimowo is joining Crenk as a contributor. Ade Gbodimowo is a Co-Founder of Aductions Inc, a technology company that has developed a platform which has a search engine that allows advertisers to find publishers. Prior to co-founding Aductions, he worked as a consultant with the Business Advisory Services (BAS) practice of Grant Thornton LLP. His primary responsibilities included helping the firm’s clients review financial and operational processes in order to maintain an overall effectiveness and efficiency of internal control processes as it pertained to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He also writes over at his personal blog Webtoks.
Ade brings some great knowledge of the ins and outs of a startup and Im very much looking forwards to seeing his comments on breaking tech news and commenting about the companies within the industry as a whole.
A note to startups and companies wishing to be covered by Crenk: it is even more important now that you use the tips@crenk.com email address to contact us with news. This address will be monitoring daily, so it is your best avenue for getting covered.
Myspace is finally trying to integrate Photobucket with their site. This has taken so long and has nearly been a waste of money so far! MySpace users can now easily add images from their Photobucket in to comments on other users’ profiles.
 
Deutsche Grammophon (DG) today announces impressive interim download figures following the launch of its DG Web Shop (www.dgwebshop.com). As a division of Universal Music Group, it was the first major record label to make the majority of its large catalogue available for download online and the response has mirrored the demand that was believed to be out there.
According to Deutsche Grammophon, in DG Web Shop’s first week it saw two million page impressions and 85,000 unique visitors to the site resulting in 50,000+ music downloads. These visitors came from all over Europe, the US, Asia and South America. The top five countries being the US, Germany, UK, France and Switzerland, respectively.
The landmark move from Deutsche Grammophon comes at a time when many are predicting a resurgence in the popularity of classical music. This, combined with the phenomenon that is digital downloading, makes for a desired and much needed offering.
As of today and in time for Christmas, the DG Web Shop will introduce the feature of gifting downloads (albums, works, tracks) as presents to friends and family and the first 1000 customers to download an album will receive a free bonus album download of The Greatest Classical Christmas.
The first ever Open Web Awards voting is almost over. The polls officially close tonight at 8:59 PM PST. In order for us and Vizu to verify the votes, we will be announcing our winners on Friday afternoon.
However, I am proud to announce that behind the scenes the judges (our 30 blog partners) have also been casting their own votes, and without further ado, we are announcing the winners who will be receiving the first ever Open Web Awards at our event on January 10th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Here are the 13 winners in each respective category of the Judge’s Choice component of the awards:
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
Applications and Widgets
Social News and Social Bookmarking
Social Search
Sports and Fitness
Photo Sharing
Video Sharing
Start Pages
Places and Events
Music
Social Shopping
Mobile
Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Once again, a thank you to our sponsors:
Reddit.com – Reddit.com is a social news aggregation website where readers, not editors, determine the top stories.
WIRED – WIRED is the first word on technology, exploring how ideas fueled by innovation change the world.
Cohn and Wolfe – Our PR partner and co-producer.
Quintura – Quintura makes you control your web search. You will find what you want as quickly as possible.
RetailMeNot – The RetailMeNot.com community saves you money by sharing 50,000+ coupon codes for 10,000+ stores.
Streakr – Discover more of the web you love together with Streakr.com
A Big Thanks to Our Blog Partners
Techdirt
/Message
Blognation
Andy Beard
Collective Thoughts
Gadgetell
Watch Mojo
How to Split an Atom
Luca Filigheddu.com
Marketing Pilgrim
Pulse 2.0
ParisLemon
UnBlogged (Spanish)
Stuff We Like
Kineda
Crenk
WebAppers
RotorBlog
Small Business Trends
Skype Journal
BuzzMag (Czech)
Disruptive Conversations
Akimoto@CybozuLabs (Japanese)
BlogOnExpo
Under the Radar
Alarm:Clock
901am
LiewCF
Social Networking Watch
Download Squad
Tape Failure hits the “Gone Under” list. Ade reports that TapeFailure has sent out an email stating that they are closing their doors. With this tool you could also track the behaviors of the users on your blog, since it can record people’s mouse movements and clicks in a video.
Email said:
Unfortunately, at the end of this month Tapefailure will be closing its doors. Why? Due to both lack of funding and a need to rebuild the system in a more stable manner.
The technology is definitely viable, but the current function of the Tapefailure system isn’t quite there yet. There are a number of things that need to be redeveloped and redesigned from the bottom-up.
During 2008, I will be working to rebuild Tapefailure with a stronger set of features, a new look, and a new name. I will also be looking to introduce even more innovative analytics methods in the new service.
I would like to thank all my customers for their continued support and patronage and I can only hope that you will join me again when the new service is launched.
Thank you,
Joshua Gross
Tapefailure Founder
Hence, there is a potential to see more from Josh in the near future. Good luck with it all!
