Disruption in 2007
By Jeff Hilimire on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007I love reading about new disrupters. There have been many books written on disruption and our local Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) is having their event this month focused on Disruption with speakers from TiVo, YouTube and Cox Media.
One of my favorite blogs to keep up with is Urlocker on Disruption and a recent post there talked about the Forbes.com article, “The Disrupters of 2006“. The list is interesting, with some obvious inclusions such as YouTube and the Nintendo Wii.
So I’ve been thinking about 2007 and what the disrupters this year will look like. Second Life will surely be one of the top 10, whether it continues to grow as it has been (from 1 million members and $500,000 US being spent daily in October 2006 to almost 3 million members today and $1.3 million US being spent daily) or if it is acquired by a big player (my guess would be that Yahoo or Google will be likely suitors). I don’t think anyone quite understands which direction virtual worlds are going but it doesn’t take much to realize that they aren’t going anyway anytime soon.
I also think the Apple iPhone is going to shake up the cell phone and mp3 player industry. Although several devices have successfully integrated the two, Apple is going to make everyone take it more seriously. So far consumers haven’t demanded an integrated device but once the iPhone comes down in price and more consumers start seeing its benefits, we’re going to see a massive shift in the industry as everyone tries to keep up.
I’m curious to see what the rest of you think about the disrupters in 2007…
First!
I personally don’t think there will be any disruption in 2007. I think technology has been growing so rapidly that it is going to take a year off and basically remain unchanged in 2007.
Long live Barbaro.
Not sure if you have already covered these:
1. Amazon’s commercial web services: In particular ECC, SSS, and SQS. These services are cheap and scalable.
2. OpenID and/or other URL-based identification services: Tired of creating accounts at various websites/blogs? OpenID (www.openid.net) to the rescue! (Side-note: A few months ago I tried contacting LinkedIn to see if they would support this standard. I think it would work quite well, as they provide a personalized URL to each member. Alas, they have not responded…)
Just my $0.02!
The release of Office 2007 marks the best and last meaningful release of large desktop applications on personal computers. The disrupter this year will be the start of the mainstreaming of online applications to perform common desktop functionality such as document creation, project planning, tax preparation etc. The economics of ASP based delivery of applications combined with easier collaboration and persistent storage across devices will reach common computer users. A corollary to this is the increase in use of desktop widgets that feed off of online services to display content. These widgets are the consequence of the rise of online applications though and not the wave that first rocked the boat.