Return to Blogging & Social Media Predictions for 2008

Huh! It has been almost 4 months now that I had stopped blogging. The reasons were many and excuses were easy to find. I have a tighter schedule now than earlier; I am finding micro-formats more and more appealing - my Twitter updates in last 2 months rival my blog posts in my whole life! But apart from this, also there is the blogger's gene, which I think has been weaker in me always. I have found that whenever I have tried (I have created and deleted 10's of blogs) to stick to a particular theme, the blogger in me takes a leave. So this time onwards, I will be free-wheeling mainly.
For this time, let me tell you what to look out for in 2008 (the predictions!) - Tumblr and Twitter will surely be acquired; There will be scope for integration of third-party mash-ups in both of them & more importantly, real growth of these services will start once monetization of the micro-content becomes possible. Facebook, on the other hand will either reach plateau or decline. Main drawback of Facebook is the lack of better and easy communication with fellow Facebookians. Facebook walls are burried deep down the heap of applications. For an average user like me, only utility Facebook is providing me with, is Movie Quizes! I don't know what else to do there (apart from watching Movie quiz updates from my friends). Orkut seems so much livelier than Facebook, though the later has a professional crowd there. One question that will be prominent on my mind will be about the fate of LinkedIn. Which way it will go is yet to be clear to me. As for as social bookmarking is considered, Del.icio.us will remain worthwhile alongwith Stumbleupon in the next year. In Social Media sites, Youtube and Flickr will rule the roost with the backing of giants Google and Yahoo respectively.
So these are the predictions - a try to guess the shape of future...nothing much revolutionary.

I hope that the postings will be more regular in the new year!