2009 was a really exciting year for people involved in search and social media. A lot of the search excitement came from the launch of Bing, the Caffeine update, Sidewiki and Real-Time search results. Social Media was finally leaving the “shiny object” stage and becoming a real force in driving traffic (online and off).
So what about next year?
I believe next year will be the mainstream rise of mobile optimization, mobile search, and geo-enabled everything. I think it will force three major components to come together – search,social media, development.
If I’m standing downtown wondering where to eat lunch, I’ll need you to have worked with all three departments to have a chance to grab me.
Is your business on Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, Tri-Out, BrightKite? Are their recommendations for you at those sites? Is the information about your business correct? Can I get your street address so I can map my way to you? If I see your business and click the link on my phone, is your site optimized for me?
I think the days of stand-alone SEO are now way behind us, it’s now an integrated science. Web development without a comprehensive plan for mobile is short-sighted at best, reckless at worst. If you have a premium product or service and don’t have a dedicated smartphone apps, you’re falling behind.
The winners in 2010 will be similar to the winners in 2009, the quick, the nimble, the confident, the risk takers and those not afraid of failure.
The losers will be the companies immobilized by the disruptions in their sector. If your boss is saying things like, “we can ride this out if we just hunker down”, you may be hunkered down so deep, you can no longer see that the parade has already passed by.
If you had to predict one thing for 2010, what would it be?
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