2011 saw the Internet continuing to play a massive role in not only people?s everyday lives, but also how businesses are succeeding. 2012 will not see any revolutionary new developments, but rather the continuation of many trends with roots in this and past years. I see next year being shaped by five major realizations:

2012 Predictions

1.)  Internet speed will be crucial for business success. One of the most overlooked success factor for a landing page is speed and it will play an integral role in virtually every business metric worth tracking. If a site takes too long to load, users leave and find another resource. A new term will also come into play for users abandoning a search result link because of speed and it will become the SEO mantra for 2012. Even if you are ranked first in a Google search, people will not wait for your page before clicking “Back” and going to the next link in the list if your landing page doesn?t open in mere seconds.

2.) The things we thought would change the Web development world have not, and never will. In my opinion, there will be no significant advancements in web development. Technology advancements that looked at one time to change web development dramatically will fail, including Chrome OS, Flash and Dart.

3.) Social Media isn?t going away. Social networking communities such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and especially Twitter have become the defacto standard of communication among consumers and this past year we saw the business community having a bigger presence in these social network outlets. Everyone wants to be ?smart? in posting valuable insight and content yet is hampered by the limitations of each platform. In 2012, I think we?ll start to see an attempt to standardize the URL shortener. It has been a ridiculous oddity of the web over the last 4 years.

4.) Microsoft will close the gap in the mobile space. By partnering with Nokia and others, Microsoft this coming year will close the gap in the mobile space. Skype will be completely integrated into Windows Phone 8 and Microsoft will leap frog both iOS and Android.

5.) Reality will sink in: Web performance affects the bottom line. More and more people and businesses will become aware of the impact website performance affects overall site traffic. Analytics companies will continue to segway into the web performance space. We saw Google analytics start this in 2011 and it will continue to become an important part of analytics.

What are you sensing will be a key theme in 2012?

Bob Buffone