2012 is just beginning and I'd like to big forth some predictions about how current trends are going to shape the world online. A few years ago Douglas Adams published an essay "What have we got to lose" where he identified that Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. He goes on to say that "magazines are very similar".
Eventually investors are going to make this more and more plain that in a commercial world, the same applies to web sites and social networks - and despite any early posturing and posing, companies like Google and Facebook eventually convert from investor supported projects to their core business - just the same as Douglas Adams identified for TV - delivering audiences to their advertisers. And - as the great man says - explaining the inevitability of this (to owners of content sites and social networks in this decade) is - " like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply" - and they will learn to be currents in the ocean of online advertising . . .
