Techie/web predictions for the year

John Battelle has his list of predictions for 2009.

I like this one, although it's not an entirely original thought.

9. Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with "social media." They will take budget reserved for media spending (IE buying banners and building out branding campaigns) and start to become publishers in their own right. This is not a new tactic (many marketers, in particular technology companies, have published magazines, for example, and many consumer brands create or co-create television series), but given the plastic and social nature of online media, many marketers will see these efforts fail, in particular when the efforts are executed in partnership with major media companies. The reason has to do with putting the cart before the horse: in order to truly succeed in conversational media, the company must itself be fluent in that conversation. A partner with tons of traffic, but who is not fluent, will not be the "translator" major brands need.

I say it's fairly obvious that most social marketing will fail because it's plain to any user of social media when they're being marketed to. Most people don't like to be marketed to. That's why the remote control ceased to be a channel surfing device after the introduction of the DVR. Now, it's a time transporter.

If you check out Battelle's other predictions, most of them play it pretty safe. After all, with the economy floundering, who's to say what will happen. When everything is swirling around us, it's pretty hard to follow a straight line.