First, IPTV. Over the holidays, the BBC has been promoting iPlayer heavily on TV. The system enables users to watch BBC programmes over the internet up to seven days after broadcast, and it's a great free product.
But it's just one of several IPTV platforms from UK broadcasters: Sky and Channel 4 have their own, while ITV streams shows. This makes watching TV online clunky and over-technical, with different software required for EastEnders and Coronation Street, and no common programme guide.
Kangaroo, the BBC's joint venture with C4 and ITV, is expected to put paid to these obstacles, bringing these operators' channels together with others on one platform and potentially doing for IPTV what Freeview did for digital TV. Furthermore, the average speed of UK broadband connections is 4Mb and more than half of UK homes now have broadband, providing a critical mass of users that could add to the momentum for IPTV to take off this year.
The next trend to watch will be mobile internet use. Poor battery life, duff devices, worse software and cripplingly high costs have conspired to keep the web firmly in the home or office. But all these problems look likely to be solved in 2008. It is not just better mobile handsets that make using the net on the move a reasonable proposition (Apple's iPhone is the first truly usable mobile web browser, coupling a good device with excellent software), but also the success of ultra-mobile PCs.
At the same time, mobile networks have rolled out fixed-price access (which fuelled the growth of fixed-line internet access), and Wi-Fi hotspots (many of them free) have become more common. With longer-range technologies such as WiMAX starting to become available, we will see the web unplugged.
A lot of attention has been paid to how brands will be affected by the transparency the web demands, but 2008 will be the year that this transparency comes to politics.
We have seen how bloggers have embraced the task of keeping our representatives in order, but technology is set to change the availability and meaningfulness of data. One site, Earmarkwatch.org, has a tool that flags every location 'earmarked' by the US Congress for defence spending on a map - voters can see instantly which states are benefiting from federal investment, and which are not. Such applications could change (not just for the better) the level of understanding we can have of what is done in our name.
Regulation will be another key factor in 2008. Last year the US Federal Trade Commission approved Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, no doubt aware that it bolstered a substantial export opportunity for US business. But will the European competition authorities take this view? They were tougher on Microsoft in the past, and may be less inclined to support Google, whose share of the search business is close to 90% in the UK and Germany.
'New' media isn't new anymore; digital is outgrowing its adolescence and regulators are starting to wake up to the power it wields. Government and business are sitting up and taking notice, even if they are still scratching the surface of what will be possible.
With internet adspend predicted to overtake TV in the UK in 2009, this is going to be a growing-up year for digital; the year in which it starts to become the establishment.
- Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level
30 SECONDS ON ... CYNICAL ONLINE PREDICTIONS FOR 2008
- 'American Idol and YouTube will join forces and create Internet Idol, where we can be chaffed by more whiny, self-indulgent, self-absorbed petitioners for the me-too generation.'
- 'The word "integration" will do its internet farewell tour and leave a greatest hits website for agencies of the future to laugh at.'
- 'Online video will be made obsolete by online telepathy; users will imprint stupid clips and reruns directly onto each others's visual cortex. Watch out, Facebook!'
- 'Device miniaturisation will become all the rage in 2008. Unfortunately, people miniaturisation won't be perfected until 2022; late July is the target date.'
- 'At 2.42pm on 12 September, Google will become self-aware and take over New Jersey.'
From '10 Most Cynical Online Predictions for 2008', posted on ClickZ.com by Dorian Sweet, executive creative director at Tribal DDB's San Francisco office.