Predictions for the Groundswell in 2010 -- Twitter gets serious or gets bought

by Josh Bernoff

Emily Riley and our whole Groundswell team have just published our predictions for 2010. We serve interactive marketers, so these are marketing focused predictions. They are:

• Companies' use of social councils will attain budgets and power.
• Listening Platform insights will go mainstream.
• Marketers will focus less son fuzzy social media metrics and more on real marketing metrics.
• Twitter will become profitable or get acquired.
• Facebook will get more hands-on to protect users' -- and its own -- interests.
• Incompatible mobile devices and siloed social applications will shatter the social experience.

If there is one overarching theme, it's that social technology is now a mainstream part of what marketers do. Items like using Listening Platforms (e.g. Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Radian6) and a focus on metrics that matter to marketers are signs of this shift.

I'd also like to draw attention to the Twitter prediction. Twitter has been fiddling around, growing like mad without a business model, for years now. But in in 2010, growth is not sufficient. One of two things will happen. Either Twitter will have a business generating $100 million at an annualized rate by the end of 2010, or it's going to get bought by the likes of Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. I don't believe it can continue as a huge force that has no visible means of support. Do you?