Tech Predictions for 2011
The iPhone will finally be available to Verizon users – Not only will this happen, it will be announced and on store shelves within two or three months.
Photo sharing will explode – In the last few weeks alone we saw the launch of startups like Path and Instagram. Services like Gowalla and Foursquare are adding photos. Photo sharing will be huge in 2011 with tons of different services competing to be the leading service on the mobile platform. Increasingly everyone has a good camera at their fingertips 100% of the time in the form of their phone. People want to compulsively share those photos.
The year of the IPO and talk of the tech bubble – There is strong indication that all of these companies will go public this year: LinkedIn, Skype, Groupon, Pandora, Zynga and Kayak. The FCC has started an investigation into second market which could also force companies like Facebook to go public. All of this will contribute to the media starting to talk about there being a tech bubble just like the dot com bubble.
Further irrelevancy of old media – Time’s pick for Person of the Year confirms it, old media doesn’t get it. As the year goes on, we are going to have more and more stories like this.
Mobile payments will finally take off – While I was in Japan this was huge. A lot of pieces are in place for this to take off stateside.
