Predictions for 2019

[engine]

What are your predictions for 2019?
Here's a few i've been thinking about.

2019 will be the real awakening of the "privacy awareness" throughout users of social media, such as Facebook and even Google. Data collection and re-use will become far more important to people than it has been in the past.

Google AdSense will continue to be a challenge for the smaller publishers.

Phishing, and online theft will continue to be a growing problem.

Email spam will continue. yawn!

The "gold rush" of virtual currency is probably over, and it will continue to be misunderstood.

SEO: Voice search opportunities will reach new highs. Snippets continue to be very important.

[Selen]

The "slow and insecure" content websites will continue getting top spots because the new "secure and fast-loading" content cannot compete with old-school, well-researched, not-copied, and not-paraphrased material.

[vordmeister]

It'll all keep on going the way it is going.

Google built the internet we know by giving lots of adsense money to everyone who put some words up on the net. Then they removed most of the money so only the half decent can cover hosting fees. Good for quality and bad for those who did the words.

Money seems to be on Youtube right now, but the same will happen once they have enough to keep it going.

In 2019 EU will introduce another privacy directive that will keep us all busy coding for a whole week to force people to agree to even more scary things. US will introduce something totally random and everyone will just ignore it.

After all that we'll still be heading to complete control of the internet through one or two companies. That sucks for now but they are greedy so relationships will be built up in the future that avoid those companies.

[lucy24]

Existing websites will continue to move from http to https.

There. That's a safe prediction.

[tangor]

The era of bait and switch (by g in particular with their ad company) will continue. One of those make hay while the sun shines kind of things.

Transparency will continue to be obscured, don't hold your breath as long as the monopoly continues.

[lakybel]

@topr8
I have some friends have facebook page with more than 1 million followers , now their reach for posts is lik 20.000 to 50.000
so I mean by zero reach that your posts on fb page won't seen by all your followers. so you need run ads to get more peoples .

[heisje]

- Bing!
- Who?
.

[tangor]

Dissing my go to? Well, it is 2019... :)

[ergophobe]

The movie "Idiocracy" is moved from the category "humor, farce" to "documentary film".

I heard an interview with one of the principals (director, producer, writer... I forget). He said that was the reason they couldn't do a sequel. There was nothing they could do that still seemed like farce but was still comprehensible to the audience, because what was farce when they did the film had become reality.

[tangor]

Sadly, however, making a film called "Commonsense" probably wouldn't do well at the box office. Sigh.

This is no prediction, just a statement of fact: the lunacy will only get worse.

[maccas]

duckduckgo with triple its current number of searches by the end of the year. I am seeing more and more mentions of it in comments on news sites, forums unrelated to webmasters etc

[lakybel]

@maccas , on my search console , last quarter on last year, I get more and more visitor from duckduckgo, I agree with you point of view

[heisje]

There will be increasing concern & chatter regarding Alphabet/Google products : Search engine, Android, Chrome, data collection & exploitation, privacy.

.

[J C Anderson]

I think there would be more content consumed with the help of mobile devices. Such content would be created specially for such purpose. And, of course, social media would be much more important than usual websites.

[DigitalDucats]

I agree on the privacy issues. Whether it's the actual number of occurrences or just the amount of people stepping forward to do something about it, it's an issue facebook and related social medias need to address in more detail.

My Adsense account hasn't seen a good day in years but it seems local marketing will thrive well this year!

Email spam will continue and email marketing will grow!

Not sure about digital currency other than it's so volatile that it could be the greatest opportunity right now (for success or for failure!)

Voice search opportunities will reach new highs-but they are almost a match to regular searches so... won't change things too drastically

[tangor]

@DigitalDucats

Welcome to Webmasterworld! So glad to have you!

[cnvi]

Text message marketing with its 100% open/read rates will eclipse email marketing which is going to be more of the norm.

[destinyking]

most likely they will focus on voice search factor and ssl on upcoming update

[cnvi]

Prediction: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will continue to ignore the countless Federal laws that Google has been breaking since 2008 and the EU will continue to do the right thing and keep fining them for every infraction.

[tangor]

Tangor's final prediction for 2019:

"It will be worse than we can imagine."

[IanTurner]

Finally I've been able to take a breath and read this.

I see a continuation of the dominance of the mega-corporate with high street retail disappearing to ecommerce except in the food and drink market place.

However the big western companies will see their profits eroded by the consumer going direct to Chinese outlets like AliExpress - governments will not see this invisible trade deficit until too late.

Equalisation of wealth across the globe will see the poor and middle classes in North america and Europe hit hardest - try to live in a country/region with a positive balance of trade.

https becomes the norm - React/Vue etc becomes the norm for websites and progressive web apps - until the hack scandals emerge.

Accessibility legislation will become more widespread - and everyone will have to make sites accessible to quadriplegics who are blind and deaf or suffer significant fines.

Accessibility/Usability consultants make changes that leads to sites which are almost unusable on a laptop/large tablet because of the large text and buttons.

All major corporates adopt logos with colours that otherwise are only used in pre-school (Microsoft/Google/Slack you are amongst the guilty - apple has moved on to an almost white logo - even simpler than pre-school?)

The divide between the consumers and the creators becomes wider and more defined.

Protests such as the gilets jaune and fawkes masks - become more widespread amongst the disaffected. More focus on food food miles, organic products, profit miles, veganism for environmental change and anti-capitalism in general amongst these groups - while no one really notices and addresses the biggest issue - over-population.