@Wood

it’s easy to see both sides of this. On one side, you can say that the NBA has a fairly clear policy that they need to enforce. Otherwise, they run the risk of encouraging other violations. On the other, the punishment seems to go way beyond the crime. Being punished for posting something positive (at least according to Jennings)? Who’s right?

I don’t know, but I do wonder if this could have unintended consequences for the NBA or any other league with a strict social media policy. For example, could athletes make arrangements ahead of time for someone else to post something for them? Would that be a violation of policy? Will people start to post obviously positive things about their teams just to get punished, thus making the league look increasingly foolish?

I have no idea what will happen, but the leagues needs to understand one thing. The days of having almost complete control over player statements is long gone. Just like the days of print newspapers having a monopoly over the news is history. I realize that it takes time for institutions to adapt to new circumstances, but there are smart ways to do it and not so smart ways. Let’s hope that the NBA and others choose the latter.

I’m not an athlete, manager, agent, ballboy, etc. so I really don’t have any expertise to bring to bear when analyzing these predictions but…..

I’m actually OK with most of them except #2. While I can see some athlete trying to leverage his social media presence in order to up his salary, I just can’t see a team falling for it. Why you ask? Simple. Having a big following on Twitter or FaceBook benefits the individual athlete more than the team. At least that’s been the case so far. Why would a team want to pay someone more money just to boost their own brand online? Compounding this problem is the fact that many teams either don’t understand social media yet or they do and don’t want to play ball (no pun intended). Rose himself points this out in prediction #3.

Having said all of that, I wouldn’t die from shock if some team actually was dumb enough to pay someone more because of their social media status. Let’s face it, teams throughout the ages have way overpaid some players for all kinds of bonehead reasons. Why should it stop now.

By the way, I really love Rose’s 4th prediction because it takes the emphasis away from the player (look how great I am) and redirects that energy into a positive direction. I, for one, hope that one really comes true. In this day and age, there are a lot of people out there who could use the help.

Gary

So that’s why I’m always so tired.

December naturally brings on a flood of predictions for the coming year. Digital Media Buzz joins the party with their predictions for 2010. Here’s what they think is going to be big in 2010 along with my predictions about if they are correct or not.

1. Facebook replaces personal e-mail - You’ve got to be kidding me. How many times have people predicted that e-mail was going to be replaced by this or that? Yes, e-mail is full of spam and [fill in your stock complaint here], but it’s not going away in 2010 or in the next few years for that matter. It’s too pervasive. I could easily see Facebook, on the other hand, suffering the same fate at MySpace someday.
2. Open source software starts making money (thanks to the cloud) - I suppose, but the DMB folks don’t set the bar too high for this one so it wouldn’t take much to come true. Sure, some folks will make some money on open source (but then again, aren’t they already - RedHat anyone?), but will it go mainstream? I guess we’ll see.
3. Mobile commerce - Again, the bar for success isn’t set too high for this, but I’ll give it to them. The iPhone and Android are obviously going to drive this even more than they did this year so I think that it’s safe to say that commerce will go up.
4. Fewer registrations: one sign in fits all - I sure wish that they were right about this, because I hate signing in to all my different accounts as much as they do. That said, it’s not going to happen. Something that wonderful will never come along so easily.
5. Disruption vs. continuity - Sure, if you say so. All that marketing speak make my eyes glaze over. What counts as “proof” that this has occurred though?
6. Continuning evolution of web-driven, open source, DIY culture - I actually agree with this one, but again I’m not sure what “success” or “proof” here looks like. I certainly agree that more and more people will harness the power of the web to pool their skills and intelligence to meet future challenges, but I don’t think that it’s going to be the standard way of doing things within the next 12 months. Give it some time though…
7. Info-art - This is the one prediction that I think they nailed, but maybe that’s just because I want it to be true. People need better and easier to use ways to process all of the data that we are inundated with and where there’s a need, someone will find a solution.
8. Crowdsourcing - I don’t know. This already got a lot of hype and it didn’t turn out at rosy as people claimed it would. Sure, crowdsourcing will continue to be used to solve certain problems, but will it become a major trend in 2010? I’m willing to bet the answer is no.
9. More Flash, not less - I love the way Flash makes the web wonderful, but I agree with one of the comments to this post. People have said, “This year Flash is going to break out,” for a long time and it hasn’t. Will things really change enough for it to come true in 2010? I can’t see why it would and if the powers that be ever get around to approving HTML5, it could spell even more bad news for Flash. Let’s say this is a miss.

Like those end-of-the-year lists? Go nuts.

Just in case you’re interested in getting a jump on the next specification.

Very interesting points on page 2 of the executive summary. Our students seem to have a “huh?” relationship with e-books in the beginning that slowly matures into a love/hate relationship. IOW, they are not even aware that we have e-books in the beginning, but once they learn about them, they like being able to search through the e-books. The big gripe is that they can’t print the whole chapter so that they can read it off line.

This is why I didn’t get all wound up in the Wikipedia - Britannica wars.