Here are some thoughts based on the author’s opinions, anecdotal data, numerous conversations, and considerable reading:

1.  A prominent tech executive in the mobile sector told me over lunch one day last week that as fast as things have been moving, he actually senses even more acceleration in the trend toward mobile.  He’s on the front lines, and he should know.  I see nothing but confirming evidence of that.  If you have no mobile strategy, even if you are selling tomatoes on the side of the road, you have no strategy.

2. The Groupon IPO filing worries me.  I have been a proponent of the “no bubble” theory based on the fundamentals of many of the prominent tech companies being mentioned as IPO candidates.  I don’t see fundamentals in Groupon.  It looks like 1999 again.  There are just two many questions about the sustainability of the business model, the ability for anyone to manage such hyper growth, the looming threats from much more established companies, the real value to merchants in terms of acquiring repeat customers, and, most of all, the actual numbers.  Sure the growth this there, but I thought their float on the money-up-front plan would mitigate the losses.  If the broader markets continue to swoon and this deal doesn’t perform well, it could be a big setback to others’ plans.

3.  There appear to be two economies in our country.  There’s one that has recovered, or perhaps was never even in a recession, consisting of the Internet superstar companies and their employees, Apple, the 25-40ish salaried crowd who are established in professions or at large employers, Beltway employees, defense contractors, and some regions like Austin that have maintained population growth and dodged the worst of overbuilding and subprime lending.  On the other hand, there are big hits being taken in public education even here in Austin, a sign of the general fiscal weakness of state and local governments across the country.  Housing values still seem to be declining generally, and it may take years for new construction to rebound.  Automobile sales, always a great indicator, are sinking again as gas prices and uncertainties rise.  And, persistently high unemployment is the big drag, and a big issue for the more recent graduates.  It’s no wonder that luxury spending is on the rise while basics are showing more weakness.  Tech entrepreneurs can’t assume a rosy backdrop for the next 24 months or so.

4.  I think we’ll see some mighty pivots this year.  Allow me to pick on Foursquare.  That company has smart leadership and stout financial backing, so I have to believe they will find a way to monetize their enormous user base.  But, at the same time I think there’s some urgency to doing so.  I spent a fair amount of time on Foursquare as an early adopter and became mayor of several places important to me.  Now, having relocated to another city, I get occasional emails that I have been displaced as mayor of one place or another.  I never once got anything of tangible value from frequenting any establishment.  On the rare occasions I have made some comment about being a mayor to anyone other than a tech colleague, all I have heard was: “Duh?”  I’m happy to see the whereabouts of those of you still using Foursquare, but you’ll rarely see me checking in.  It will also be interesting to see where Quora heads from here; it was initially useful to me, and entertaining, but it’s now gotten rather repetitive, stuffy, and overladen with verbosity.  Namesake is an LA-based Q&A site that I find far more interesting and more suited to brevity and occasional humor. 

5.  There are too many technologies being thrown at us too fast.  Look at all the tablets announced in Taipei last week, the dueling mobile platforms, the dueling version updates of just the Android platform, not to mention more than 500,000 apps from which to choose.  I have begun to believe that if you have more than 5 high-tech gadgets in your possession, one is always malfunctioning.  You have to budget time every day for trouble shooting something on which you have become dependent.  Where is all this headed?  I think Apple proves that product design, both the physical presentation and the UX, is the most important component of the winning formula.  I Tweeted recently that my cable remote has 63 buttons, many of them <3/16” in diameter, and many leading to sub-functions.  If half of them were dummies, I’d probably never find out.  Sadly, it’s much easier to engineer something really complicated than to design something powerful yet simple to operate.

And so the year is flying by.  We can all look forward to the “24 Days of Christmas” we’ll need to keep up with all the new stuff between now and year end.

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