Beaconfire Survey: What online innovactions do you predict in 2008?
Posted Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 1:42 pm by Beaconfire Bloggers (25 posts)
Editor’s note: 
each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week’s question: What online innovations do you predict in 2008?
Ali, Marketing Consultant: In a word, I’d say synchronization. Users are increasingly being stretched across different social platforms, multiple email addresses and sources for information. Though I don’t have what “it” is, I think it’s going to be a better tool to get all your online needs met at a one-stop shop.
Tim, Functional Consultant: I see the next year as one where we will see widespread changes in both the devices that people are able to use the view web, as well as the interfaces we are able to create for them to do so. I think that we’ll have to be even more vigilant to ensure that these new interfaces continue to be inclusive of all audiences. Our users, more and more often, are going to be accessing our sites through wireless handheld devices (phones are already in much wider use for this in other countries) and figuring out how this increased and widened access to our sites intersects with out desire to try and do even more with the same sites, will be a great challenge.
John Brian, Marketing Consultant: I’ll predict that in 2008, we’ll see more integration between CRMs and social networks. Convio has a one-way Facebook integration module already – the next step is to see two-way integration between data sources – we’re starting to see some networks become a mini-internet of their own, but with far more personalized content. We’ll also hopefully see SocNets open up a lot more (on which OpenSocial is a start) and we’ll start to see NPOs and companies assuming that people will have a social network presence when launching campaigns.
Ken, Software Engineer: My prediction is that Microsoft’s Silverlight will gain momentum and will become a technology of choice for create rich internet and smart client apps.
Join us next week when we do a survey of lessons learned from the online campaigns the Presidential candidates are running.
