As I gazed into the crystal ball nearly 12 full months ago, I made ten predictions for 2010. Now that we are in the final week of the calendar year, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look back and see how I did.
1. Swine Flu Squeals: I said that H1N1 got blown completely out of proportion and, in the grand scheme of things, the so-called swine flu is going to end up a small blip on the world health radar. I’d say I was right on that front.
2. Tweets Make Money: Paid tweets gained a fair bit of traction in 2010, not only from Sponsored Tweets, but also alternatives like MyLikes. I wouldn’t say that they became big money-makers for too many people, but they did much more commonplace.
3. Google Waves Hello: Google Wave was the talk of the social media town at the beginning of 2010. Unfortunately for the search engine giant, that buzz (no pun intended) pretty much fizzled. Google waves goodbye to Wave.
4. Apple Tablet Launches: The iPad not only made its official debut in 2010, it opened up a huge can of tablet-flavored worms. The popular iDevice is dominating its niche, but it’s on the cusp of facing some big competition from Samsung, Motorola, RIM, Asus, and others.
5. Canada Wins Gold: It was a long time coming, but the Canadian men’s hockey team finally won Olympic gold on home soil. The entire city of Vancouver celebrated in unison, along with millions of Canadians across the country.
6. Saints Win Super Bowl: Sticking with sports, I put my money on Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy and, sure enough, they defeated the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. This year, the Saints find themselves fighting for a playoff spot.
7. Interest Rates Escalate: I was optimistic that the economy would see an upswing and interest rates would rise to reflect that. I was wrong. Interest rates, for the most part, are still very low, both for mortgages and for savings accounts. That said, Vancouver real estate is still as unaffordable as ever.
8. Up Misses Cut: Pixar’s Up
9. Touch Dominates All: The iPhone is popular. The iPad is popular. And so are the tons of other touchscreen-centric smartphones, tablets, and other devices that have infiltrated the market in 2010. That trend will surely continue through 2011 with more Android phones and other touchscreen-equipped gadgetry getting even more traction.
10. System Rumors Surface: No PS4, Xbox 720, or Wii2 systems just yet, but we did see the Microsoft Kinect
So, taking a look back at my 2010 predictions, it seems that I have seven or eight out of ten correct (depending on how you assess #10). To be fair, not too many of my predictions went that far out on a limb. Did you make any predictions for 2010? How did you do?
I think especially if they can decrease the prices of the touch devices and the prices to maintain such devices, the trend would skyrocket!
-Jean
I think you are stretching with #8. As you said, it was a great movie, but you cannot expect an animated film to win best picture. No animated film has won the award(Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Disney-Pixar’s Up were nominated), and only one comedy (Shakespeare in Love, 1998) has won in the last 30 years.
Swine Flu is probably not a small blip for the people who had it; but I do agree that it was blown way out of proportion.
Oh, I realize that it was probably a big deal for the people that had it, but in the grand scheme of things, it was not as impactful as the press made it out to be. People die from the regular flu all the time, unfortunately.
@Michael, in the university I attended they made a policy just because of the swine flu, but nothing majorly (thankfully) ever happened with swine flu in our school. Basically the policy was that the student was allowed to be excused with no penalty at all from the class room if they had swine flu, and in fact they were required to not show up to class and had to leave the campus, lol.
-Jean
I stay away from predictions. But your were right on the money for the most part. What are your predictions for 2011?