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Top 10 Web Trends 2010

As 2009 quickly draws to a close, we ask what 2010 holds in store for social media, smart phones and the latest web technology. Although difficult to envisage with pinpoint clarity, there are certain trends emerging.  Among the online front-runners to be the next big thing in 2010 are content curation, cloud server technologies, social gaming and convergence (eBooks being an exception to this rule!). 

1.) Real-Time

Driven largely by the growing popularity of technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed, the ‘real-time’ phenomenon has been to 2009 what the ‘web 2.0’ trend was to 2007. The term itself refers to the growing requirement for immediacy in our daily online interactions and activities. It is the essence of this need for immediacy that creates an addictive, compelling and highly engaging online experience. It’s a sense of existing in the here and now.

Real-time technologies are more than just a barrage of copycat Twitter services hitting the web in 2010 (although this is utterly unavoidable). It’s a combination of various elements, largely driven by increased smart phone usage and the immediate satisfaction associated with a successful Google search return.

Smart phone users no longer need to wait to get home to post a comment about the Scotland score in the football or a scandal on the X Factor. There are now a multitude of optimised web services and smart phone applications that facilitate these requirements. Any individual can comment before the final whistle has even blown, or Cheryl Cole has had a chance to say her bit. Users need no longer wonder which song they are listening to in a bar, when Shazam can provide the answer within seconds, simply by holding the handset to the speaker.

As we have discussed recently with the advent of Google Wave, look out for real-time collaboration software too. The service has been launched in beta recently amidst a blizzard of hyperbole and utter confusion.  Blending existing functionality such as wiki’s, email and instant messaging, Wave will enable people to get things done, together. As baffling as it may seem currently, users will ‘get the memo’ in 2010 and its function and purpose within our lives will become clearer. We haven’t even started to scratch the surface.

2.) Location is King

An old mentor once told me, ‘there are three fundamental success factors in retail: location, location and location’. Had he been referring to the web and the growing list of mobile applications in 2010 he would have been absolutely correct. Fuelled largely by the presence of GPS within our smart phone handsets such as the iPhone, GPS is now utterly ubiquitous and a pivotal element of many outstanding mobile applications. Applications that enable location sharing such as Gowalla, Brightkite, Google Latitude and Foursquare have become the latest trendsetters moving into 2010.

Services such as Foursquare stand a good chance of success in 2010, provided Facebook and Twitter are not planning on introducing a plethora of location-based functionality and destroying these hopes. This somehow seems unlikely. 

Location is simply not about an individual product or service offering. It actually represents the addition of a new layer to the web and a means of enhancing existing applications and software. Before we know it, we will be tagging our precise physical location every time we use our iPhone to post a comment, send a tweet, upload a photo or post a video to YouTube. 

3.) Augmented Reality

This mysterious and rapidly emerging trend is yet to fully penetrate the consciousness of the public in the UK.  Augmented reality presents a whole new world of opportunity for developing applications for web and mobile devices such as the iPhone. The latter part of 2009 has seen a buzz in the ‘early adopter’ social media communities.

So what is augmented reality and how does it enhance our existing technologies and daily lives? Imagine walking through any city in the world and peering through the video camera on your iPhone. Imagine as you walk past restaurants and clubs and focus on the camera, you start to see reviews associated with each venue appearing in real-time on your screen. Imagine visiting a historic attraction, looking through your camera and seeing Wikipedia entries associated with that place. The possibilities for developing highly innovative and useful software applications are truly staggering.

This will be enabled by GPS, mapping information from the likes of Google Maps and the accelerometer functionality present in most modern smart phones. Essentially, augmented reality enables us to overlay real data on top of our every day environment.  Take Layar for example. It utilizes the picture from your iPhone’s video camera and overlays bubbles of information from Yelp, Wikipedia, Google Search and Twitter. These services face the difficult prospect of proving to us that they are truly useful and capable of enhancing our lives in a meaningful and engaging way. They certainly have the ‘trendy factor’, lets see what 2010 holds in store for augmented reality…

4.) Content Curation

In 2009, one of the biggest challenges the web has faced is the frenetic pace at which we are presented with new information. In terms of web economics, the supply of new information, whether meaningful or not, is vastly outstripping it’s demand and our ability to consume it. ‘Information overload’ has become a commonplace gripe as smart phone and web users struggle to cope with the avalanche of new data presented to them on a daily and hourly basis.

Content creators constantly pitch for our ever-decreasing attention spans. With billions of daily status updates and links to news articles vying for our ‘eyeball time’, how do we learn to efficiently allocate that most precious of our resources; our interest? One potential solution, as demonstrated with Google news, is to use algorithms in an attempt to filter and customize the news content that is made available.

In 2008, Facebook Connect presented a seemingly useful solution to this problem, enabling your chosen network of friends to effectively act as ‘the filter’.  Facebook Connect is a third party developer API that allows site owners to enable interaction with content using a Facebook profile.

In 2009, Google created ‘Social search’.  A means by which to create effective and customised search results based on information from social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg. This means that your friends effectively become the curators of your own content when suggesting links, movies and music to download. 

5.) Cloud Computing

The phrase ‘could computing’ has fast become an enigmatic buzz phrase of 2009 and this trend is likely to continue into next year. In essence, cloud computing makes the traditional hard drive redundant, as information and data that was previously stored on our desktops is saved to a giant virtual cloud server. This means that our data can be accessed from anywhere and enables collaboration within working teams.

The first half of 2010 could see a major shift in this direction with the launch of ‘Office Web Apps’. This is a free online version of the Microsoft Office suite with applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint that will be launched in tandem with Microsoft Office 2010.

Next year will also see the launch of the eagerly anticipated Google Chrome operating system. Forcing us to ask, ‘how many applications do we really need running on our desktop?’

6.) Internet TV & Movies

When will the majority of our TV and movies be streamed directly from the Internet? Will 2010 be the first year when this happens. Hulu, Apple TV and Boxee are already services that are moving in this direction.  Hulu itself has gained considerable momentum and popularity throughout 2009 and this trend is set to continue. One driving force in this market place is the involvement of the big TV networks and movie studios in the USA. With a number of high profile movie studios set to back Epix (like a Hulu for films), 2010 could be the year for Internet sourced films and television programs.

7.) Convergence

Many years ago, Bill Gates described a futuristic technological utopia in which all devices converged onto a single machine. This would enable web browsing through our television sets. Convergence would provide us with the ability to control central heating systems, lighting and alarm systems from within the home using a centralized remote control.

This trend presents a contradictory conundrum in 2010. Whilst we say many features being bundled together within mobile handsets like the iPhone. We are also witnessing a growing trend towards task specific devices.

In 2009, Tom Tom made the bold step of releasing a £59.99 GPS application for the iPhone, negating the requirement for the user to purchase the actual hardware. This could have been viewed as an admittance of defeat in some cases, or at least an acknowledgement of the declining demand for these products. Google had to go one better, releasing a similar free service on the Android platform later in the year. The warning to GPS hardware manufacturers such as Tom Tom and Garmin is clear, as these devices could be altogether phased out in 2010.

So as devices converge according to Mr. Gates’ vision, which technologies are fit for the chopping board in 2010?  Flip video cameras have been all but decimated by the iPhone 3GS. Insiders at Apple have suggested that the iPhone is eating the iPod alive. Why carry two separate devices when you only need one?

 One gadget potentially set to buck this trend is the e-book reader. Gadgets such as the Kindle provide a perfect middle ground between the power hungry laptop and many smart phones with inadequately sized screens. But is this just a fad? Carrying additional devices is never a desirable thing.  The main factor preventing the convergence of the book reader into a smart phone is the lack of adequately optimised screen technology.  High quality, low powered screens may tip the balance in favor of the smart phone.

The unique and compelling thing about the Amazon Kindle is that it is very easy to use. Essentially, the Kindle does for books what the iPod did for music and Amazon is to book readers what iTunes is to music lovers. 

8.) Social Gaming

Social gaming is set to be a good bet for budding developers in 2010. Farmville, a farm management application created for Facebook, now accounts for more impressions than Twitter. Playfish, a popular social gaming company, were recently acquired by EA in a deal reportedly worth $400 million.  What make these applications compelling are the commercialization opportunities, as we start to see a growing number of games with built-in micro transactions. Both Farmville and Mafia Wars utilize a ‘virtual currency’ system within the game that enables users to purchase specific items or progress further in the game in return for cash. This could be a key consideration in 2010 as social media start-ups look for the next big money spinner. 

9.) Mobile Payments

2010 could be the year that we start to see a growing number of smart phone applications with built in transaction systems for handling payments. This is a trend that has so far been characterized by the Far East, with little or no significant movement in the western world.  With the introduction of PayPalX, a developer-focused platform for creating in app transactions, and Amazons mobile payments platform, this trend could start to increase in 2010.

One service that may be of particular note in this area is ‘Square’. This is a start-up set up by one of the Twitter founders and enables merchants to accept payments via the Apple iPhone. 

10.) Micro-Celebrity

Andy Warhol was definitely right on this one: fame is in abundance. Driven largely by the growth of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in 2009, there are now a universe of micro celebrities throughout the world. Nowadays, anyone can enhance their personal online brand using one of the myriad of technologies available from YouTube to AudioBoo.

However, with this celebrity obsessed culture comes a price in the form of personal privacy. The birth of the status update, location based tagging and video upload, although voluntary, are contributing to the erosion of personal privacy. This should be a heavily discussed media topic moving into 2010.

Waracle Ltd are based in Dundee, Scotland and specialise in social media platforms and application development for web and mobile. If you want an application for iPhone, Google Android or Facebook, please contact us directly for a free quote on (01382) 529528