Defining 08/09 - analysing the year past and the year ahead

It's fast moving towards the final day of 2008. What a year it has been. I usually (much like many bloggers) put together an end-of-year post that sums up a few things and pulls together events all nicely. I am going to be composing one of those articles but this isn't it.This post is a collection of answers from some of the top people, movers and shakers and industry leaders in the online market. I asked them two questions:

1. What was the single most defining moment in the South African online industry in 2008?

And

2. If you were to make one prediction for 2009 what would it be? And don't tell me that mobile is the next big thing!

So let's dive straight in to the answers:Fred Roed, CEO of digital marketing agency, World Wide Creative.1. Barack Obama winning the election. This meant that digital agencies such as World Wide Creative could justify their presentations demo-ing how messages are accelerated online. We could say ‘See! Look how he did it!’2. Hype around Mobile and Social Media will be removed from the industry, meaning that digital will go mainstream. Following the international norm, marketing agencies will increasingly use online as the major destination point for all the other channels to feed into.Vincent Maher, Portfolio Manager for Social Networking at Vodacom SA1. For me the defining aspect of the whole year is that there didn't seem to be a defining moment. There we a few things that happened but none of them were defining in the classic sense. In many ways this is a sign of maturity in the industry and an indication of resilience to smaller influences.2. The breadth and reach of social networking is going to increase through services like Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect and this will also reveal several vulnerabilities in the form of viruses and spam across these networks. Location-based services are going to become more accessible on the API level for developers to incorporate and, importantly, the global financial meltdown is going to cull a lot of the flimsy Web 2 operations and make the industry a little more intersting.Andy Hadfield, The Internet & Social Media Guy, FNB1. The credit crisis. The credit crisis is probably going to precipitate Bubble 2.0 - which is excellent news. Unlike last time, there have been precious few IPO's, which means while many web startups may go down - they won't take public shareholders with them. And any bubble burst presents a great opportunity for web companies that offer REAL value to rise to the fore. Oh, and Twitter. But it seems 3 million really active users still counts for value in someone's book :)2. The battle to own the social profile will increase. FaceBook vs MySpace vs Google Friend Connect vs Et Al are going to muddy the waters for the first 6 - 8 months of the year. Hopefully, coming out of that will be value driven profiling services which allow you to centrally store your social profile, pick it up whenever you want and hop all over the web. Let's face it: storing a picture, bio and web links is not a value driven social profile. These companies are going to have push the boundaries a little to force consumers to make a call on where their social data and social networking time investment will sit...Heather Ford - Web social entrepreneur1. Quality Vacation Club suing blogger Donn Edwards(http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/) for defamation. I think it'simportant because, while the same comments have come from themainstream media, QVC has chosen to sue the blogger. It will beinteresting to see how this turns out - at the crux, I think, iswhether 'fair comment' on a blog is being seen by South African courtsas equal in importance to 'fair comment'.2. My prediction is that we're going to see greater diversity in theSouth African blogging community next year - people linking to thoseoutside of their social circles, invitations to bloggers' socialgatherings like the 27 dinner, and more training and connections(here's hoping!)Duncan McLeod, technology editor, Financial Mail, and editor of www.FMTech.co.za1. Definitely Altech's victory against communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri which now allows just about anyone to build a communications network in competition with incumbent operators such as Telkom, Neotel and the mobile phone providers.2. Bandwidth caps will soar -- people will get at least triple the bandwidth for the same price -- as Seacom comes online. This will lead to strong growth in online business in SA in 2009.Charl Norman is the co founder and chief operations manager (COO) for Blueworld Communities. BWCOM owns numerous niche social networks based in South Africa.1. Blueworld Communities (www.bwcom.co.za) being acquired by Naspers - this paved the way for other acquisitions in our local space - Zoopy and Afrigator soon followed with investment from Vodacom and MIH/Naspers. This created investor confidence in our small local market and enabled other startups to more confidently seek investment.2. The economic crisis will slow down venture capital investments and startups unable to figure out their revenue model will have their funding reviewed or forced to merge with other similar lower tier startups.Users will own their online identity (e.g. profiles) with tools like Google and Facebook connect. Users will carry this identity along with them around the web forcing online communities like social networks to embrace data portability technology.Social media will also become more mainstream as tools like Twitter will be adopted by the general public and not just geeks. Good companies will have concrete social media strategies as part of their overall marketing strategy.Catherine Luchoff is joint partner and founding member of MANGO-OMC1. There isn't one particular moment I can single out as the defining moment of 2008. Rather, I consider 2008 to be a defining year: One in which social media, crowd sourcing and micro-blogging found their footing and laid the foundation for converged campaigns that will, and have, defined the way we communicate and consume information.2. With filter failure on the rise and information overload rife, community manager positions and descriptions such as 'trusted filter' will become more prominent. 2009 will also be the year in which the foundation for a holistic measurement tool, one that takes all channels into account (online, offline and mobile), will be defined.Interesting stuff. Hopefully those who didn't get to the questions will be able to post their responses in the comments of this post. I sent the email out to ±25 people for their comment.