Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog

What’s going to happen in 2006? I don’t know honestly but I have a few ideas.

1. Microformats vs Structured Blogging skirmish.

Technorati and PubSub are both going to be at fault here (sorry guys). I consider myself friends with people from both companies but it just seems inevitable and it’s because both teams are a little bit stubborn. Can’t we all just get along?

2. Way too much money funding too many also-ran startups.

We’re already starting to see the RSS, calendar, and desktop space clogged. Since this will be another bubble you’ll see a lot of carpetbaggers just in it for the money.

The great thing about the .bomb was that you were able to see who really cared about technology and who stayed in the valley. I know who was here and who left. Winer was one of the ones who stayed. Say what you will but that guy does care a lot about tech.

3. Both AOL and Amazon will want to get into the blog search space.

Amazon is going to add blog citations within Amazon.com. This is a really specific prediction but it just seems obvious.

I assume Feedster and IceRocket will be acquisition targets here if not at the very minimum for their data set.

Technorati is the obvious choice but I think they would want too much money.

4. Internet Explorer 7.0 (if it ever ships) will help make RSS explode.

Remember when AOL unleashed hoards of users onto the Internet? Expect your feed subscription counts to rise as soon as IE 7.0 ships.

Of course maybe I should hold off on this issue for 2007. I’m not really sure they’ll be able to ship it in 2006.

Of course if they would base it on FireFox they could ship it in 2005.

5. Yahoo will purchase at least 4 more Web 2.0 companies in Q1 - Q2.

I hear a few rumors floating around so this is more of an educated guess than a prediction.

6. TailRank will take off (ok… I’m cheating on that one).

NOTE: My 2005 predictions are on my old blog on a URL that I can’t find right now. If I find it I’ll make sure to update my commentary here.