2006 Web 2.0 Predictions
Requested by up to one million people, maybe more, here's Randy Charles Morin's 10 Web 2.0 predictions for the year 2006. — Let's start with some easy ones. Somebody will buy YouTube for $millions. I love YouTube. — Somebody will release a new version of RSS or a competing syndication format.
Context & Ripple Effects
Randy Charles Morin closes out a week in which the blogosphere was taking stock of itself: TechCruch had just listed the Web 2.0 companies its editors couldn't live without, and John Battelle had asked what happens when you mash up RSS, IM, and publishing. Morin's answer is a ten-point scorecard for 2006, led by two calls — that somebody buys YouTube, and that RSS gets revised or challenged by a rival format.
Both calls have visible grounding in the corpus rather than guesswork. The confirmed report that the SNL Chronicles of Narnia rap pushed YouTube traffic past Google Video search gives the acquisition prediction its premise, while the Blog Business Summit panelists' complaint about inconsistent subscribe buttons — Molly Holzschlag couldn't find a feed — is exactly the usability mess a format revision would address.
First-order effects
- YouTube starts 2006 as a named takeover candidate in industry commentary, with its confirmed traffic surge over Google Video supplying the rationale acquirers would price.
- RSS toolmakers and publishers hear the format called into question directly, compounding the subscription-usability failures panelists documented at the Blog Business Summit in October 2005.
Second-order effects
- Any competing syndication format forces aggregator and publishing vendors serving the RSS installed base to choose between tracking the fork or defending compatibility — the same integration question Battelle's mashup framing raised.
- Google Video, already trailing YouTube on search-driven traffic, faces pressure to respond on product rather than distribution as video becomes the sector's consolidation battleground.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Web 2.0 value concentrates through acquisitions of traffic leaders rather than technology licensing, making audience metrics the currency of the consolidation cycle.
- Syndication moves through the familiar standards loop — fragmentation under usability pressure, then convergence once a dominant implementation emerges — determining which feeds infrastructure survives the decade.
The trend: Web 2.0 is entering a phase where annual prediction lists function as public scorecards and consolidation targets are picked from confirmed traffic winners like YouTube.