Newsweek & New York Times Validate Another of Our Predictions

In Feb. 2010, we published our annual list of trends and predictions for the year. As part of our Prediction #5: The Top Dozen Business & Technology Stories in 2010 Will Include... we said one of the top stories would be "The freelancing of the US workforce -- or how we'll all be contractors or 'perma-temps' in the future (especially given the jobless nature of the recovery)."

In an article in June 2010, Newsweek ran an interesting article that validated the above prediction: "The Vanishing 9-to-5 Job: How the recession is accelerating a cultural shift in the corporate world toward more flexible workdays." And on Sept. 1, the New York Times ran an
article, "New Job Means Lower Wages for Many" that looked at the impact of a lack of steady jobs.

Keep in mind that the point of the trends is to identify story angles the media will be working on for the oncoming year, and then developing approaches to get clients into those stories.

Meanwhile, in the same list of top business and tech stories we expected to see, we predicted a lot of attention paid to "Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft and EMC vs. HP vs. Oracle." We've been right about part of that: Google vs. Apple has been a big story, bigger than Google vs. Microsoft.
(Check out It's Apple vs. Google in the New Phone Fight, that appeared in Newsweek in June.) But there's a version of that we missed on: Dell vs HP (fighting Over 3Par). Can't get 'em all.

As always, we'll do a recap at the end of the year to determine how well we did overall with our list, breaking out the trends we got right and the ones that we did not.

Front-Page New York Times Article Validates Another Prediction

The New York Times validated another one of our predictions, this time in a front-page -- though below-the-fold -- article, "Recession Adds to Appeal of Short-Term Jobs."

In Prediction #5: The Top Dozen Business & Technology Stories in 2010 Will Include..., we identified the following topic as one the business press will cover a lot this year:

• The freelancing of the US workforce -- or how we'll all be contractors or "perma-temps" in the future (especially given the jobless nature of the recovery).

The Times did not use the term perma-temp, but the article described exactly the phenomenon we predicted.

At the end of the year, we will tally what trends we got right, and which ones we got wrong.

Prediction #5: The Top Dozen Business & Technology Stories in 2010 Will Include...

Of course, there will be stories that we have not identified that could generate significant coverage in 2010. But based on what we know now, here's a list of some of the stories reporters are sure to be working on this year (though not necessarily in this order):

1. The economy, including the recovery, the housing market, auto industry and the "new normal."
   
2. The freelancing of the US workforce -- or how we'll all be contractors or "perma-temps" in the future (especially given the jobless nature of the recovery).
3. Apple's iPad and the future of mobile computing and Apple's iPads vs. cellphones vs. Kindle and other e-readers.
4. Cloud computing and virtualization -- and yes, we know: they're not the same thing.
5. Health care reform.
6. Regulations.
7. Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft and EMC vs. HP vs. Oracle.
8. 3-D TVs.
9. The state of the media, especially print media and advertising, online-only business models and online subscriptions.
10. Twitter's business model.
11. Location-based services and behavioral targeting by advertisers.
12. Online privacy as social media, behavioral targeting, location-based services and hackers combine to make it easy for others to access personal information.

Please note: This is not to exclude other topics we've included in our 2010 predictions.