Revisiting my 2011 tech predictions — FREE fake Jamaican accent included, mon!

Miss Cleo

One thing that annoys the heck out of me about the end of every year is that starting in December, the entire blogosphere becomes Miss Cleo and obnoxiously tries to predict what will happen in the next year in social media/tech trends, fake Jamaican accent and all. (OK, maybe I just read them in a fake Jamaican accent to make them more entertaining and bearable. Try it–you’ll see.)

Yet, seldom do most of those fake-Jamaican-accented, blogging tech prophets actually compare how well their last year’s predictions stacked up to what really happened.

I’ve never been a fan of this yearly tradition of Miss Cleoing*; all it ever does is just stir up more unnecessary noise in the echo chamber. Any idiot can pull predictions out of their butt about what the next year will bring, and few ever do any real research to make educated guesses.

As fate would have it, last year I was charged with doing just that — not pull predictions out of my butt and write a blog post, but researching past and current trends, past and current predictions, what might be under the radar, yet up-and-coming, etc. and, along with the assistance of a colleague, write a big ol’, in-depth paper of educated guesses

predictions for our own “11 Trends to Watch in 2011″ (original, I know).

Unfortunately, because of some situations beyond our control that we could not have predicted, our paper was never published.

However, I’m a pack rat when it comes to research (both digital and hard copy), and upon cleaning my desk a week or so ago, I came across my printed-out research for this shelved project, an inch-thick stack bound together by a binder clip which must have been magical because it seemed to defy the laws of physics. (I should have taken a picture.)  Practically every end-of-the-year Miss Cleo post and whitepaper I could find in the blogosphere, printed out, hand-highlighted, notes written in the margins — it was enough for me to basically say  to myself, “Holy crap, I did this all in vain.” 

Or maybe I didn’t.

I’d like to not think that all of my research and efforts were futile. After all, I did subject myself to combing through everybody’s Miss Cleoing, which not only fueled my disdain for end-of-the-year predictions posts, but was enough to unconsciously get me reading everything in a fake Jamaican accent for the next three months. (It’s funny when you do it in your head but when you accidentally do it out loud … well, I digress.)

Anyway.

Even though it was never published, I wanted to see how I did in my educated guesses

predictions compared to what actually happened. So I dug up the outline from my files and took a look. I didn’t do too bad. I was WAY off on a few things, but you know what? Very few end-of-the-year blogosphere Miss Cleos revisit their last year’s predictions and compare them to reality (or, at least not publicly). But I will.

So here it is. The outline for the unpublished paper, my own attempt at Miss Cleoing last year and predicting what 2011 would hold. I haven’t modified it except to add the preface at the top, and clean up a couple typos.

About the beginning…

From everything I read of everybody else’s, I noticed that there was a LOT of what seems to be a common problem in this field — stating the obvious. In December 2010, many people were “predicting” what was already happening, things that were already a given. Saying that people will use a lot more apps for their every day needs (whether on tablets, phones, in browsers, etc.) is hardly prophecy. It was already happening. Saying “search will get more social” had been happening, too. Growing concern for privacy? That too.

Things that are obviously becoming  (if not already) omnipresent do not count as “trends” to “predict.” That’s called practicing your superpowers as Captain Obvious.

So I acknowledged these things and moved on. After the jump, I’m going to attempt to examine each of these and whether or not they came true. As I said, I know I was way off on a few of these. Some of them I was right, but others, I’m honestly not sure and maybe you can help me out to let me know if it happened or not.

[Note: This ended up being a much longer post than I originally anticipated, but it reads quickly, I promise.]

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Thank you, Amazon, for remembering the Hello Kitty-loving grown men in our lives.

I absolutely LOVE it when Amazon gives strange pairing suggestions. Like, “People who bought that folk music CD also bought this toaster!”  Some of them I’ve seen are really funny, but I haven’t gotten any good ones lately.

However, almost exactly a year ago today, I was Christmas shopping for my dad on Amazon and needed ideas. So I looked in their gift ideas guide under  both “Dad” and “Boyfriend/Husband.” The latter category had a “Cycling Accessories,” to my delight since my dad is an avid cyclist.

The following is a screenshot that I took last year and posted on Facebook, asking my friends,

“So, should I get my dad the Hello Kitty bike bell or the Disney Princess basket?” 

This year I’m finding myself once again not having any idea what to get my dad for Christmas. So, I went back to Amazon and checked under the same gift guide, and the same categories.

That Hello Kitty bike bell and Disney Princess basket must’ve been really popular last year with the guys, because they’re still there. 

Have you gotten any fun and/or odd Amazon pairings lately? Please share if so! (Links to screen shots encouraged.)

I finally decided what I’m going to do with this blog.

I know you are bursting with joy.This blog underwent an identity crisis for quite a long time, and the last time I thought I knew what I wanted to do with it, I decided to keep it (somewhat) focused on communications technology. I strayed away from what I thought I wanted to write about quite a bit. I wrote a lot about music, which is my first love. There’s quite a bit in the archives about that, but I decided to launch a music blog for that kind of thing, which took a backseat to real life happening and my inability to make a decision on what to do with this one.

This morning I woke up all but certain I was going to retire this blog and domain forever, but still keep the archives up (to completely kill it would be foolish, it has great SEO). I was just about to pen my farewell post when I visited my big identity crisis post  and re-read the comments.

You know what? My commenters were right.

I shouldn’t feel like I have to pigeonhole myself in one category or another here. That invisible obligation is what has kept me from publishing a lot of stuff here that I’ve written offline. I’m not going to do that anymore.

This is my damn blog and I’m going to write about whatever I want here.

Whateva! I'll do what I want!The funny thing is, I never really had any intention of doing anything huge with this blog in the first place.

I’ve said in the past, and I continue to say, that it exists as a sounding board for whenever I feel like I have something to say. I never had any “strategy,” nor was it ever my goal to become any sort of online “public figure,” or even make any money. I bought the domain because it was a funny nickname given to me from a few friends, and then the online handle just kinda stuck. It was my own self-imposed pigeonholing that I’ve been contending with.

Ironically, I’m a staunch nonbeliever in classifying artists these days into genres of music. I’m not sure why I was trying to peg myself in one particular genre of blog.

That Damn Music Blog was ideally going to launch in 2011 (though I never gave it an official launch date since I had lots of stuff happening IRL), but now, because of life and being wishy-washy about this blog and a few other life-type things, it’s looking more like January 2012.

Anyway, henceforth (yes, I say “henceforth” in real life, it sounds so much better than than “from now on,” dontchathink?) — consider this under the “personal blog” category.*

*I realize this is not exactly an earth-shattering announcement, but I think I had to write it for my own clarity of thought. What I do know is that I’m going to have a lot more fun here in the future, and I hope you do, too. Thanks for sticking around. 

Like you need another reason to procrastinate online…

The Procatinator

If you know nothing else about me, you know that I love cats.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that half of my Facebook friends have hidden my updates in their newsfeeds because of my excessive sharing of photos of my cats, cat videos, LOLcats, etc.

I’m not as nuts about cats as this girl, but boy, do I love me some cats. After all, the internet is made of them.

Anyway, it’s not often I actually blog about my cat findings on the web (or blog in general, I know, I know…), but yesterday I found the BEST cat-related thing EVAR.

Introducing. . .  The Procatinator!!

It’s random GIFs of cats. Set to music. And it’s wonderful.

Like its name suggests, it’s easy to waste time on this site.* I’ve found it to be the perfect thing to lift my mood up if I’m in a funk and make me laugh. Yesterday I kept clicking the “show me another cat” link on the left and about fell out of my chair laughing.

You’re welcome.

*I am not responsible for your lack of productivity from The Procatinator. 

Another “Ning” bites the dust, another chance to drive this important lesson home.

Way back in July 2010 (which is light years in internet time), the “create-your-own-social-network” platform Ning decided to nix its freemium model in favor of a tiered pricing plan. Even though its lowest tier, for groups under 150 members, was only $2.95 a month, many small nonprofits, civil service organizations, and other groups already strapped for cash that were using the Ning platform as their main hub were up a creek with nowhere to go. So I wrote a post about a service I was familiar with called Amazee, and called it “a winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities.”

 

Amazee Closes

It was recently brought to my attention in the comments of that post by one Tobias Eigen of Saidia.org that Amazee will now also be shutting down, as of December 23 of this year. Tobias wrote a post about this story, and drew some lessons from it in particular for civil society organizations looking for “free” places to host their campaigns and other stuff. He feels very strongly that they should be looking to open platforms (preferably run by other civil society organizations), so as to not get shafted again.

Said Tobias,

This trend reminds me just how important it is to have civil society platforms run by civil society organizations. We need to have reliable places we own and can rely on to put our stuff and to run our campaigns to fight for our communities, our environment, the future of our world.

I couldn’t agree more, and encourage you to visit Saidia.org to read further into his points.

As an example of an open platform, Tobias points to Kabissa, a volunteer-run platform which is a “space for change in Africa,” and supported by donations from the community. While I personally love this idea, unfortunately not all nonprofits have the knowledge of how to set something like this up, which as I pointed out, was why the Nings and the Amazees existed in the first place.

An alternative open platform,  WiserEarth.org, was mentioned in the comments, and while it is an open platform, I personally found the usability rather poor and hard to navigate. There’s very little “social” about it, and most of the causes I indicated interest in hadn’t had any activity in months. I see WiserEarth (as a concept) as a step in the right direction, but they really need to work on their UX.

When looking for alternatives a couple months ago I found  Mixx, which since I began researching for this post, has change into a platform called Chime.in, a network based around interests. When researching what happened to Mixx, I found this on the Wikipedia entry:

As of October 4, 2011, the Mixx Classic website has been shut down and now only displays a “we’ll be back soon message” and a e-mail address collection form which subscribes you to a newsletter that will announce the relaunch of Mixx. As of October 8, 2011, this message still exists. All former Mixxers lost all their saved and indexed data despite being promised otherwise by the Mixx staff. All Mixx user profiles have been deleted. The profile pages return errors, do not even 301 redirect to home, and the site lost significant PageRank and potential rankings. Apparently a total fail.

As I write this, obviously the Wikipedia entry hasn’t been updated, but I’m sure it will be soon. (I’m too lazy to do it myself right now.) The concept of Chime.in itself is fine and not too unlike what the original Mixx was, but this serves as yet one more reason you should not be reliant on third-party platforms. They’re always subject to change, and like Amazee, Mixx offered no downloadable CSV or XML file, or any other way for users to preserve/archive their content.

While the majority of the emphasis in this post thus far is on civil society organizations/nonprofits, as I said in the comments of Tobias’ post, it isn’t just  those folks that need to keep this in mind.

No matter if you are nonprofit, for-profit, a public figure, musician, etc. — You need to have your own “home base.” Period.

Detroit Tigers' Home BaseI’ve personally always advised my clients, regardless of what kind of entity they are, that they needed to “own” their presence on the web and not rely on other platforms such as Facebook, though those are a nice complement to your online presence.

I don’t know how many musicians I’ve worked with who have insisted that they “didn’t need a website because Facebook/Twitter/ReverbNation/whatever was enough.” All I had to do was point to MySpace and the demise of its relevancy on the social web, asking them if they’d REALLY like to keep migrating from platform to platform all the time and not having an online “homebase.” Oh, and grab your digital knapsacks, kids, as of the other day, there’s now Google Music.

I also know there are myriad small businesses who are in this similar mentality that they don’t need a website, their presence on Facebook is “enough.” Guess what? It’s not enough. If you’ve got a presence on Facebook, Twitter, now Google+, etc. … THAT’S GREAT. Good for you for learning how to check off a box, no matter how much you might hate the “hassle” of doing it. BUT, unless you own it, you’re just squatting on free property until “the next big thing” comes along or, in the case of Amazee, that property decides to close down.

“Oh, but where to start?”

I undertand that a lot of the ins and outs of this can seem overwhelming or intimidating to people who are not “digital natives” or otherwise comfortable on the web. But it doesn’t have to be.

Rodeo ClownThere are plenty of resources out there to buy domains and host a site. I personally prefer 1and1.com for my domains and host elsewhere (though they host, too), but there’s GoDaddy, BlueHost, Rackspace, and plenty of others out there. If you fear the technical stuff or the design stuff, most of them offer “one-click installs” of various content management systems, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others. For collaboration purposes, in the place of something like Amazee, MediaWiki is usually one of the one-click installs offered, and it’s pretty popular with the nonprofits and rather straight forward.

If you are still overwhelmed and don’t know where/how to start, there’s also Page.ly, where you can set up a WordPress self-hosted site and host it, and they’ll even give you plenty of templates to get you started with a “look.”

I can’t stress enough how important it is for everyone, no matter if they’re a nonprofit, band, brand, small business, “public figure,” singing midget telegram service, rodeo clown, or WHATEVER that you can’t rely on third party, “free” service for your main online presence. It’s a relatively small investment to purchase a domain (less than $10) and host it (varies).

The best part? It’s YOUR site, that YOU own, and nobody can take it away from you.

Detroit Tigers photo via heidigoseek, rodeo clown via Bill Gracey.

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