John BattelleVerified account

So my predictions, in a ten tweet thread: 1. Crypto/blockchain dies as a major story this year. the Silicon Valley hype cycle is a pretty predictable thing, and there’s simply too much real-but-boring work to be done right now in the space.

2. Donald Trump blows up. When he does, it will happen quickly (in terms of its inevitability) and painfully slowly (in terms of it actually resolving).

3. Facts make a comeback. The 2018 elections will prove that our public is not rotten or corrupt, but merely susceptible to the same fever dreams we’ve always been susceptible to, and the fever always breaks.

4. Tech stocks overall have a sideways year. By year’s end, all the year in review stock pieces will note that tech didn’t drive the markets in the way they have over the past few years.This is because...

5. Amazon becomes a target. Last year I thought the fear of job losses would dominate the political discussion, but Russia managed to eclipse those concerns. This is the year Amazon becomes the poster child for future shock. And...

6. Google/Alphabet will have a terrible first half (reputation wise), but recover after that. I’m not sure how the company recovers its mojo, but it could be by pushing deeper into a strategy of letting its children grow up outside the Alphabet conglomerate structure. And...

7. The Duopoly falls out of favor. No, this doesn’t mean year-on-year declines in revenue, but it does mean a falloff in year-on-year growth, and by the end of 2018, a increasingly vocal contingent of influencers inside the advertising world will speak out against the companies.

8. Pinterest breaks out. The big question is whether Pinterest can both scale its inventory in a predictable and contextual way, and whether it can make its self service/API-based platform super simple to use.