Predictions for 2008?
Engadgetdamus bids you greetings. With MMVII in the can, we can only direct our ponderations to what fantastical gadgets and events await in the new year. We beseech you, foretell the year's events and present your predictions. Will Android be an out of the gate success, or a slow starter?
Context & Ripple Effects
Engadget's New Year's Day post is one entry in what has become a fixed ritual across tech media: MocoNews ran its inevitable 2006 predictions two years ago, ReadWriteWeb posted its 2008 web predictions a week before this, and John Battelle's Predictions 2008 landed the same day. January 1 has quietly become the industry's agenda-setting window.
What distinguishes the Engadget take is its framing device — 'Engadgetdamus' solicits predictions from readers rather than issuing its own list — and its choice of central question: whether Android arrives in 2008 as an out-of-the-gate success or a slow starter. That single question captures the year's biggest unresolved platform bet.
First-order effects
- The comment section becomes the product: by crowdsourcing forecasts instead of publishing a staff list, Engadget converts its audience into the prediction engine and measures reader sentiment on Android directly.
Second-order effects
- With Battelle and ReadWriteWeb publishing their own 2008 lists in the same week, prediction posts compete for attention at year's end, pressuring every major tech outlet to stake public positions — Android foremost among them — that can be checked twelve months later.
Third-order effects
- If the annual cycle holds, these posts function as a running accountability ledger: each January's calls get implicitly graded by the next January's editions, giving platforms like Android a public scoreboard that shapes how the industry remembers which bets paid off.
The trend: Year-ahead prediction posts have hardened into an annual tech-media ritual that doubles as a public scorecard for the industry's biggest platform bets.