The Three Golden Rules for New Year’s Predictions
“Making predictions is hard, especially about the future” said Yogi Berra but that doesn’t stop us trying.
ValleyWag and ReadWriteWeb have already announced their predictions for 2008 and they make for fun reading. The first golden rule to making new year predictions is to get the balance right between unobvious (ValleyWag’s prediction that the WSJ goes free didn’t exactly require Nostradamus like powers) but at the same time not too unlikely. There is definite kudos for nailing long shot predictions however you don’t want to end up with a list like Wired’s 2007 predictions (Google hits $1,000, Digg becomes the new Friendster and dads become biologically irrelevant).
John Battelle did much better with his 2007 predictions (YouTube to be integrated, Amazon to move into web services and Google to get significant negative press), which Robert Scoble recently reviewed. Of course he sometimes uses the second golden rule of making predictions which is to keep them vague and/or widely applicable (e.g. one major internet company will screw up on privacy/trust).
My modest suggestion for would be predictors would be that when making predictions ensure they are precise, testable and attached to a probability. The last one means we might be a bit more forgiving if it is a long-shot prediction. So taking ReadWriteWeb’s (RWW) and ValleyWag’s (VW) lists, and adding in some of my own (Hubdub) here are my predictions for 2008:
100% likely: Wall Street Journal to drop the pay wall (VW), Facebook does not get valued in a transaction at greater than $15 billion (Hubdub)
80% likely: Zoho to be acquired (RWW), Digg to be acquired (RWW & VW), SixApart gets acquired (RWW & VW), Facebook to remain independent (VW), Linden Labs to remain independent (Hubdub)
60% likely: YouTube announces HD (VW), AOL gets spun out (VW), Twitter remains independent (VW), Technorati enters the deadpool (VW), Tumblr to be acquired (RWW)
40% likely: Twitter to be acquired (RWW), Facebook to release a browser (RWW), Google Open Social to be a failure (RWW), Yahoo! has a major lay-off (VW), Perez Hilton’s TV show gets cancelled (VW)
20% likely: Facebook to decline in popularity (RWW), Microsoft to buy Technorati (RWW), Google to hit $800 (VW), Jason Calacanis starts another project (VW), Microsoft buys Yahoo! (Hubdub)
Of course if all else fails and you get them all wrong you can always use the third golden rule: Brazen it out and forget all about your predictions.
Any one want to add to the list (or bid the percentages up and down)?
UPDATE: John Battelle has now published a rich list of predictions for 2008.
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Tags: forecasts, Predictions, predictions for 2008, technology
December 31st, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I forgot to add you can follow all the end of year predictions on this Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/predictions08?page=6
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:01 am
I don’t think mathematicians or bookmakers should talk of a future event being 100% likely. Or would you accept a five pound bet against the price of your house?
I haven’t read up enough to make any techie predictions, but here are two other predictions to get the ball rolling:
On a negative note: Governments are good at massaging crime figures, burglaries go uninvestigated and muggings not even reported. However, as every crime writer knows, bodies are very difficult to dispose of discretely. So statistics for murder are usually accurate.
Thus, my prediction:
60% Likelihood that the murder rate in 2008 is at least 5% higher than 2007 in England and Wales.”
On a more positive note: Voltaire said: “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.”
I feel the same about Global Warming. It is the perfect storm of a political problem: “Everyone” is to blame, and “Everyone” is the victim. It demands policies that are decided and implemented at a world level and whose success is absolutely impossible to measure.
And the predictions that are being made are on timescales that ensure that the predictors will be retired on generous pensions long before they have to pay up. What was the temperature again that they said it was going to be in 2050?
Anyway, I’ve thought up a prediction that can be played out and bet on every year:
45% likelihood that world temperatures will be colder in 2008 than the average of the previous 5 years.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
You’re right about the 100%, that was a statement of confidence rather than a real prediction. For 100% read 95%…