OK. I give in. I succumbed to writing my Digital Marketing predictions for year 2010. The past few years have been spot on and I thought it might be good to pen down some thoughts- and revisit them later next year to get a pervert pleasure of how much and how many of them have been right.

iMediaConnection published the article, but a quick post explaining really what is the next wave for the digital media.

Essentially, my 2010 Digital media predictions are from a grounded and rational perspective. Of course, all of us are like Truffle hunting dogs at this time of the year- hunting for trends instead of truffles- and trusting our noses to get us there. But key is to keep expectations in place and have a more grounded perspective on what is practically achievable in the next 12 months timespan.

I have mentioned a few things- that you can find in another article , but I wanted to highlight one special point.

Of all the prognostications surrounding what the next wave around Digital / Social Media going to be, here is mine.

Translated, it means- The Systematic Web.

This is the next real wave on the internet. Actually, it is already happening in a way.

After Web 2.0, surely there will be no Web 3.0 (as in the term). Web 2.-0 as a term has also been less structured and open to interpretation in a lot of ways.

With Web 2.0 and the conversational wave on the internet, came the unorganized, free-for-all culture. Your digital conversations and footprints became haphazard, cumbersome and clunky.

The new paradigm and the next phase of the internet will focus on organization of this content.

The web 2.0 or conversational space will see a new level of sophistication. There will be better organization of content and more structured creation of content. Simply put, we will see the chaotic and unorganized nature of today’s conversational web become more Systematic.

We will see the emergence of the ‘Systematic Web’ or Web raised to the power of system . The name itself will lead to the meaning unlike ‘Web 1.0’, ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘Web 3.0’- which have been open to interpretation.

We have seen Twitter organization via lists- and Facebook organization with Live Vs News feeds. We have seen more privacy controls and better content organization by platforms themselves.

Not to mention the huge third party ‘organizers’ that have cropped up in the system. We have seen Friendfeed, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck- and so many others. Essentially what do they attempt to do? They organize content in a more meaningful way than the original platform owners. The Systematic Web.

Multiple platform fatigue syndrome? We have Posterous. Problems with finding the right conversations? We have many conversation monitoring services- that could systematize random conversations by various attributes- sentiments/influence/volume/topics- you name it. On the move?  Web 2.0 ratings not enough? Welcome Foursquare, Rummble,  Gowalla and what not.

Need to port your persona? Need one key to many sites? Easier than Feeds and Open ID? No worries. Facebook has Facebook connect, Google has Google Friend connect.

And now Google also has another one- Google Social Search.

Talking about search, It is not just Google- Twitter launched better search options a while ago- and included the ability to add an additional search modifier- location (and even sentiments) to the search (You could search ‘fit’ with a smiley to see positive or happy sentiments about fit and ‘fit’ with a for negative sentiments). Facebook too now allows for searching only your network or across Facebook.

This is not just Web 2.0. Think about it, it is all about Systematizing the present web. It is Web^sys

Systematization implies:

The next wave is already upon us- and it is not Augmented Reality (yet). Not sending ad messages by brain scanning. Not even the semantic web. It is the Systematic Web.

Web^sys

Think about it

Shalabh