It’s that time of the year when we do some crystal ball gazing – but before that, lets see how much of 2008 predictions came true.
This is what we predicted:
Death of SocioNets
Do I have to say the words? Except Orkut and Facebook, most of the socionets are dead and the ones who have survived are taking a different path
Rise of Mobile Communities/SMS Service
What did we say: “If 2007 sowed the seeds for social networking sites (probably too many seeds in a barren garden?), 2008 will witness the death of many such sites and will instead witness the rise of mobile communities.
And 2008 will witness more of such mobile communities, where people would just want to get the latest news/updates on topics of their choice on the ubiquitous device.”
What Happened: Startups like MyToday, SMSGupshup (raised $11mn funding)and Mobme are doing well and big brother, Google too launched sms channel service
SaaS will see an uptake
This is evident from the sudden increase in number of SaaS startups in India, as well as funding in these markets. Moreover, Airtel’s decision to get into the SaaS market is a big boost to SaaS providers.
Indian Small Businesses will be “Googled
Google did the ‘We are famous. Find us on Google Maps’ campaign across few Indian cities. Unfortunately, it bombed.
Travel Industry
What did we say: Consolidation is the name of OTA game and while OTAs expand into other areas related to travel (like bus booking etc), M&As will drive the growth of this industry.
What Happened: Most of the OTAs have ventured into bus booking. Few travel agents have either shutdown or talking of consolidation.
Links to our earlier predictions:
Essentially, most of our prediction have come true (not blowing the trumpet); and now, we are inviting you to share your 2008 story – especially on milestone events (tech/startups/business etc)
Also, we will share our predictions (crystal ball gazing) for 2009 – expect some harsh/candid stuff there.
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Saas is going to go big in 2009 i agree. Especially indian startups like Deskaway (check them out on http://www.deskaway.com). They have been innovating like crazy. Included microblogging, made Deskaway more social. Saas and social networking integrating to create a better experience with productivity – does that hold the key. Web worker daily covered this as well – http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/12/10/deskaway-embraces-the-social-turn-adds-more-personalization-options/
I even saw their nifty Basecamp escape feature. Its neat. Export data from Basecamp into DeskAway. This indian startup has its fundas right.