Batting .400 For My 2010 Predictions in the Tech World

At the end of each year, it has been something of a tradition to make wild predictions that few others are making, and then mock myself for those I got wrong. This year should be no different. At the end of 2009, I made concrete predictions for the world of tech, which assumed a strong IPO market, increased acquisitions and some specifics from the big players, including Apple and Google. As usual, I got some right, and others wrong. Let's see how I fared.

History: Predictions for 2010, 2009 and 2008. Results for 2009 and 2008.

1. Twitter Manages to Complete 2010 With No Major Hacking or Security Incidents

Right. After a shaky start to the company's life in terms of both scale and security, Twitter really held its own in 2010. They didn't get hacked and for the most part, they stayed up. There were no large-scale hacking incidents for major users and no strategy docs leaked to TechCrunch. It's the little things.

2. Seeing Android and iPhone, Windows Mobile Will Aim for Parity, and Fail

Right. Fail is a strong word, so maybe I'm presumptuous here. But Windows Phone 7 is absolutely an approach to take on Android and iPhone, and early reports haven't been great in terms of sales. Given the late launch of the product, I would have to take more of a wait and see attitude to see the final result, but thus far, it'd be a stretch to see them in a strong #3 role in the smartphone race.

3. Apple Will End Exclusivity With AT&T, Adding T-Mobile and Verizon

Wrong. Another year went by with AT&T acting as Apple's boat anchor. Rumors again are flaring up around Verizon, but not in time for 2010 to be counted.

4. Facebook Will Announce a Migration Plan for FriendFeed Users

Wrong. FriendFeed is still there, just as it always was, with a dedicated community, not going anywhere. Facebook keeps it alive even though many of the acquired FriendFeed team have since left.

5. Google Wave Will Exit 2010 Still In Beta

Wrong. I expected Google Wave to not be ready enough to consider a solid product, but I certainly didn't anticipate the product being axed outright. Even by Google's standards, that was a very short-lived product.

6. Facebook, Zynga, LinkedIn Will All Go Public

Wrong. Not even close. One thing I hadn't anticipated relative to historic activity was the strong role played by Russia's DST, who has made hundreds of millions of dollars available to late-stage companies like Facebook, Zynga and others. The increased demands of going public at a time when rewards for late stage investment are so high has reduced the need to go public early in a company's life cycle.

7. Chrome OS Netbooks Will Be Available from Major Retailers

Wrong. I may have a Chrome OS Notebook, but it came straight from Google in an early trial. It's too early for this product to be sitting at Best Buy or Fry's, but maybe this changes next year some time.

8. Many Social Media Experts Will Launch Mediocre Agencies

Right. I am sure this is true and don't even have to go back it up. :) Even in looking at some of the lesser-read tech blogs that infiltrate my Google Reader, I can see a lot of folks took side jobs as independent consultants focused on social media, and it doesn't seem they are all that differentiated. Feedback from companies I have worked with in various roles indicates they are pitched often by SMEs with sleazy tactics.

9. Google, Facebook and Apple Will All Make $1B+ Acquisitions

Wrong. Not that it was Google's fault of course. The company made very visible overtures to Groupon and allegedly to Twitter as well, with no success. Facebook remains cheap, while Apple did its spending on Quattro Wireless and Siri early in the year, at prices less than a billion bucks.

10. The Real-Time Search Market Will Consolidate

Right. Very much so. OneRiot got out of the real-time search game altogether and launched an ad network. Twazzup's founders launched a Twitter client and later the Facebook iPad app Friendly instead of focusing on search. Collecta and Topsy are still out there, but I would venture a guess that most users will just turn to Twitter and Google for real-time search instead of going to the lesser-known startups.

Total score? 4 out of 10, just about where I usually bat, not because I am a bad guesser, but because I don't like guessing the obvious and would rather have some fun with each year's predictions. In 2009's predictions, I scored 4 1/2, and only 1 1/2 for 2008. Maybe I'll break 50% next year and maybe not.

Don't Look for Hints of Buzz Demise After Wave's Closure

During last fall's debut of Google Wave, which seemed to be a launch of a complicated solution in search of a problem, I was immediately struck by the overwhelming nature of the platform, which inundated me with update after update and parallel conversations all vying for my attention. Not unsurprisingly, I stepped back from the product, as many people did - hoping it would improve in simplicity and utility over time, eventually becoming a product I could use for collaboration and real-time messaging. But that day never came. Like many products, much of Wave ended up being all about itself - as people first were attracted to its novelty, and later, many threads were all about how to best utilize it, with tips and tricks. It was there because it could be, not because it should be.

Wednesday's announcement that Google Wave has been discontinued as a stand-alone product is not dramatic for almost all people, as it wasn't being used all that much, beyond tire kicking, as people seeking social outlets went one way, and those seeking collaboration stuck to more traditional tools. Wave didn't kill e-mail or any social tool, and pieces of it will live on in other Google products as the company says they have learned from the episode.

With rumors of Google Me flying about, and Google Buzz still not having entirely recovered from some early misguided press and unclear utility in a social world dominated by Facebook and Twitter, it is logical to wonder, for some, if the Mountain View owned aggregation and sharing site will follow Wave to an early end. I would not be so fast to reach this conclusion, even if Google hasn't done as solid a job in marking product milestones the way they have finally determined how to make big splash launch announcements. The product, as best as I can tell, sees regular updates, with more features in the queue, and has a good, if not overwhelming, level of use from casual to devoted participants. And it seems very logical that even if Google doubles down with a new product like "Me", as rumored, that Buzz would play a major part in its development - as would the company's expanded Google Profiles.

At its end, Google Wave, for Google, was as much an application environment as it was a destination. Thus, its closure should not have elicited any more of a response than if we learned Google had abandoned the Go programming language, or Closure tools. But Wave wasn't hyped as a development platform or a bucket of features. It was thought of as potentially disrupting e-mail, and as recently as the South By Southwest conference (SXSW), the company's GMail team was being asked questions about competing with Wave for attention and resources at Google, and the panel called it "a leapfrog project" for the future Web, not today's Web.

Google Buzz is not a leapfrog project. It's hard for Google to force a leapfrog when it is they who are playing catchup in the social space. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly stated the world does not need a Facebook clone, but it does seriously need a real alternative. Today, Buzz is not that alternative, and the team's developers never positioned it as a Facebook killer, Twitter killer or anything of that nature - instead focusing on building the product on open standards for sharing of content, and we have seen the Buzz buttons populate the Web in a way that less-successful products, FriendFeed included, never did.

Multiple sites, including TechCrunch and GigaOM, have reported Google has a new head of social in the company's VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra. Vic was present at blogger pre-briefings of Google Buzz back in February, and participated in the official launch on stage at their Mountain View campus, so he is very close to the team. Additionally, as I've previously mentioned, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is particularly keen on Buzz's success, and the company most certainly does not want to lose even more page views and advertising opportunities to social competitors.

That said, Google Buzz hasn't immediately captured the imagination of users and seen dramatic growth some have expected for it, although statistics for its use are practically impossible to find. Even as Google said it was not intended to be a head-on competitor to Facebook, it has instead been regarded internally as an extension of Gmail, and that likely isn't the best place to have an active social network, even as Schmidt says the team "is doing very well".

Following Buzz's debut and initial privacy bumps, the team discussed introducing new features as regularly as once a week - and visible introductions, ranging from the official Buzz buttons to integrated comment and like histories by account, have popped up, but the fanfare from Google has been minimal - as the company continues to do a less than stellar job of continuing to get press from iterative updates.

In a discussion I had with Google employees recently about why they choose to stay at the company instead of going to an IPO-bound alternative, most notably Facebook and Twitter, one responded that working at Google was like working with future technology that was anywhere from 12 to 18 months away, and that, like light reaching the Earth from stars extremely far away, we are working on technology that is itself somewhat dated.

With one foot deep in speculation and the other on more firm ground, I can't help but believe some of the relative quiet around Buzz from the Google team is related to their being focused on something else that leverages their work in a big way - the next social volley, whatever it turns out to be. But Buzz isn't going to get eighty-sixed only six months after launch. I think what we are seeing instead is the emergence out of the "Trough of Disillusionment" so popularized by Gartner's Hype cycle, and a slope toward productivity. When it climbs that slope, it might still be called Buzz, or it may have a new name, but it isn't going away soon.

You can, of course, find me on Buzz here: http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray.

Gmail Failures, Crazy Ideas and Wave's Leapfrog

On the Web, there is a lot of confusion over where Google Wave fits alongside the recently-introduced Google Buzz, or even if Wave is supposed to be a companion or competitor to Gmail - which could potentially cannibalize the company's extremely visible (and profitable) e-mail business. Today at the SXSW conference, the team leading Gmail said the company has to take risks, learn from mistakes, and yes, even sometimes build products that are in conflict and may replace one another - in the name of keeping competition from doing it themselves.

As it was described this afternoon, Google Wave, which debuted in early beta last year, is a "leapfrog project", which goes beyond today's environment, but is set to impact a future Web. The team working on Wave, as discussed with the product launched, is looking to do more than just build a collaborative service, but to possibly even replace e-mail itself, something the GMail team recognized might seem at conflict to their core mission.

"When people ask if we are cannibalizing our own services, we would rather cannibalize our own services than have other people do it," said Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.

Putting significant resources into disparate product lines that may come to future conflict might seem crazy, or even a bit paranoid, but it sounds like that is par for the course for the team, which said it likes to take big risks, which might not ever see the time of day, or die when they do. In fact, we learned today that Google Buzz's original incarnation began several years ago.

"Most of the things we try fail," said Jonathan Perlow, software engineer on the Gmail front end, responsible for GMail Chat and Mail Goggles. "We have lots of things that are false starts. We recently launched Google Buzz, and it had some false starts before it launched. We started something like Buzz around when we launched chat four years ago. Good ideas live on, and you figure it out."

Figuring things out for the Gmail team can be very quick. The team boasted of a close-knit engineering environment where ideas can be discussed and coded quickly, and where meetings are the exception rather than regular practice.

But while most failures for Gmail have occurred in testing and not made it outside of the walls of Mountain View, the initial failures for Buzz happened thanks to the team making some core mistakes and not having a testbed of real-world users, relying too heavily on their open corporate mentality.

"Gmail thought that e-mail and chat networks were also the social networks, and we missed the boat there," said Jackson. "(Autofollow) worked really well within Google in a trusted environment. Googlers rarely used block."

While Gmail's focus has changed over the last six years with the additions of Chat, Buzz, user interface updates and other features, the product initially aimed with three main goals: enable users to never delete e-mail, have a spam filter that really works, and build a Web interface with the level of quality of a desktop application - concepts that nobody knew how to do, but wanted to accomplish anyway.

"One of the lessons I learned is that when we start with ideas that are crazy at the time, but we thought we could do, they would be pretty great for users, said Perlow. "They had no idea how to build these things, but had to figure it out."

Google Wave Hits Shore. Flash Flood Warning In Effect.

As you already know, Google released a waterfall of 100,000 invites to the Google Wave preview over the last day or so, giving bleeding-edge early adopter and information addicts a new playground to exchange conversations in real time. After months of hibernation and anticipation, Wave's arrival has everyone's tongues wagging, as we all get an early look into Google's plans to redefine messaging, delivering a real-time platform that includes rich media and extensibility through gadgets.

Since Wave's introduction earlier this year, I have seen a number of differing ways the product has been described. From a new development platform to a suite for business collaboration or an (insert popular social service name here) killer, the guesses have ranged far and wide. Interestingly, however, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lars Rasmussen defined Wave as "a modern version of e-mail", adding that e-mail is "an old-fashioned technology". So it makes the most sense, at this point, to look at the Google Wave preview as a potential replacement or enhancement to today's e-mail systems, notably GMail.

Having received an invite to Google Wave via Denton Gentry, a Google employee who is also a frequent commenter here on this blog, I jumped into the Wave fray late last night, and found the system to be extremely stable and much faster than anticipated. For a "preview" release, Wave is very good, especially considering the complexity that is involved.


My first "wave" seemed simple enough.
Google Wave takes on traditional e-mail systems and incorporates chat-like or instant messaging technology all in one. Instead of a typical "I send you a message, you receive it and you reply" type of exchange, Wave encapsulates conversations between people and shows real-time responses in line, more like threaded comments than individual messages. If you and I are having a conversation in Wave, you see me type out my responses, typos and all, as I pound out a reply. To respond to my note, just click below the last message and extend the thread.


Almost immediately, my Wave filled up with conversation.
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As this specific "wave" (lower case) is being updated, new waves can pop into our in boxes from anyone. Like traditional e-mail, if anybody has your address, you can be copied on a note. But Wave enables anyone to add contacts from their address book to any thread at any time. So while you may initiate one conversation, you could be dragged into another one that already has 60 entries. The good news is that Wave has a "Playback" button which enables you to watch the conversation occur, in the order it was entered, but the bad news is if you are in enough active threads, the act of watching each one can be time consuming.

Like most early discussions around new services, the vast majority of conversations are actually about the service. Just like FriendFeed-related items get liked more item on FriendFeed, and Twitter-related tweets get retweeted, last night's Wave swarm was full of conversations all about Wave. Does it work? Where are the gadgets? Who doesn't have invites, but needs them?


One active wave shows participants and nested comments.
Because of the real-time nature of Wave, I quickly found that if I engaged in one wave (lower case) and gained replies in another, the other contact might feel that I had "left" that thread. Since I can't yet be in two places at once, the real-time aspect was more like when you have multiple chat windows open in Google Chat or Facebook Chat than if you had more than one e-mail message. So staying on top of all active waves can be a tremendous challenge - one that practically promises to keep you embedded in the application until every single message is muted and all your contacts go do something else (which may never happen).

The instantaneous nature of Wave immediately makes other assumed "fast" programs seem slow. For example, adding comments to FriendFeed for a live conversation now seems slow, as it requires the entire message to be completed before being posted. In comparison, in Wave, I see you type it immediately, and can actually formulate a response as you're writing.

Google Wave, as should be no surprise, is integrated with Search. You can insert videos discovered on YouTube and photos from Picasa or other services into Wave, and make them part of any conversations. You can play back YouTube videos below text, or post new videos to those you're talking to.

But yes, as you are watching a video, more waves are crashing into your in box. While you may not get the feeling that you have hundreds of unread messages, as you do with traditional e-mail, every single wave conversation shows how many new entries have been made since you last viewed the thread. Every single wave can have dozens of new entries, depending on the number of contacts and conversation that is there.


A typical Wave "In Box" after a night's activity.
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Meanwhile, until Google Wave is integrated into GMail or other Google services, checking your Wave becomes yet another place to go so you're not missing conversations directed your way. So for somebody like me, who has a personal e-mail address, a work e-mail address, a GMail address, and e-mail addresses for company clients, Wave is yet another inbox and place to go to check in. And the new address (louisgray@googlewave.com) is another place for people to send me things.

I can see how small teams may use Wave for real-time collaboration. Its nature offers an opportunity to further eliminate distance and improve information exchanges. The ability to add people on the fly to conversations is very interesting, as is the ability to ping somebody and have a 1-1 conversation in the middle of any wave, or in a dedicated side exchange. I expect the company is set to debut more widgets to further extend the platform, both bringing content into Wave and content out from Wave. For example, last night, Jesse Stay and I had an exchange where he added a Twitter gadget, but thanks to something I would consider a security bug, I was able to send a tweet on his behalf because I was engaged in the thread. (See the tweet I made here)

Wave, like many Google products, also supports keyboard shortcuts to aid in navigation. I hopefully hit J to go down and K to go back (like I do constantly in Google Reader), but found it is the space bar that you hit to go step by step. Wave is an extremely interesting platform, and I would bet that after the initial surge of curiosity, normal conversations and information exchange will eventually take over, so this initial spike may be an exception rather than the new rule. But if you're diving into this new technology, expect do be exerting a lot of energy to stay on top of it, because messaging just got accelerated.

Also see: Scobleizer: Google Wave Crashes on Beach of Overhype