In my role at Library House, I see and hear a lot about future trends. Our Essential Mediatech event at Waterloo’s IMAX Theatre was enough to get anyone hot under the collar in anticipation of what’s to come. So here are my three to watch and why you should care:

THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The first is the upcoming social network war between Microsoft and Google, and the growing importance of social networking to all our lives – and I mean all. Microsoft now has a minority stake in Facebook, the fastest growing social network, and will be serving ads into its network. This is a first step, and I would not be surprised to see other integration elements, such as MSN messaging appearing within the walls of Facebook.
Meanwhile, Google’s OpenSocial movement has really opened up a Pandora’s Box by signing up virtually every other social network to its standardised coding, allowing members of different social networks to interact.
Social networking has certain qualities that make it very popular, but so far it’s been a lot more useful to my 16-year-old daughter than to a middle-aged guy like me. However, this isn’t because the values of social networking are only useful or interesting to young people. It is because the systems are set up for specific demographics and you are confined to one site. But now, because of Google’s standardised coding, people will not only be able to key in who they are, but also who they want to interact with, irrespective of which network they belong to. Once this takes off it will become one of those areas where people will not be able to switch off, and will leave you wondering how you ever managed to survive without it.

PCS REPLACED BY MOBILES
The next big trend for 2008 is the march of mobile phones to replace PCs as the core computing tool in our lives. In 2007, one of the most interesting unnoticed changes was the shift from charging people for price per megabyte to flat rate plans.
This is like the switch from dial-up internet to broadband, and it has enormous implications. High-quality mobile phones will suddenly become affordable. It will also becomes easier for third parties to create applications that can be used by huge numbers of people who won’t have to pay for the service.
This is a big barrier to bring crashing down, so next year I expect to see a lot of new applications for mobile phones springing up. But don’t expect to see phones replacing PCs yet – there are still a lot of constraints on them, not least the battery. But their functionality will accelerate rapidly.

TV SET FOR WEB TAKE-OFF
I also expect to see an explosion of internet TV shows – content programmed specifically for the web, where producers have written a script, hired actors and recorded a show, as opposed to user-generated content.
Interestingly, most of what people watch on sites like YouTube is actually programmed content, even though it only represents a minority of posted material. This shows people still want to see high-quality, specially tailored content.
Consequently, I think a lot of new types of production companies and creative groups will pop up to serve this growing demand, bringing them some new economic models and players on the web. It’s going to be very exciting and if you happen to be directly involved in one of these industries, then you are sitting on a great opportunity. If not, you’re losing time…