My Predictions for 2014: How’d I Do?

Each year around this time I look back at the predictions I made 12 months ago, and I score myself with some combination of objectivity and defensiveness. And each year I do pretty well, batting somewhere between .500 and .750, depending on how you keep score.

This past year was different. First off, my predictions were unusually sparse. I started the year in a funk – I was depressed by our industry’s collective ignorance of climate change, and it showed in my writing. I called 2014 “A Difficult Year to See,” because my vision had been clouded by a deep anxiety over why tech hasn’t tackled what seemed to me to be the world’s most pressing problem.

One year later I find myself in a more patient stance. But given the goal of this post is to review how I did, and not how I feel today, let’s get to the score card.

1. 2014 is the year climate change goes from a political debate to a global force for unification and immediate action. It will be seen as the year the Internet adopted the planet as its cause.

Well, maybe not. I think I wrote from a place of “I wish this was the case” as opposed to “I think this actually will happen.” What I can say is this: Climate change is now a front burner issue for all thinking people on this planet, and that’s certainly a shift for the better. California, cradle of the tech industry, is in the middle of a severe, inescapable drought, one that weighs heavily on everyone working here. Sure, California has had cycles of drought in the past, but this one is different – in just three years, we’ve eclipsed draught data from as far back as 1,200 years, and as persistent as seven years in duration. Data like this starts to change how people think about their impact on the world.

But it takes time. Last year I hoped that “…the lessons of disruptors like Google, Twitter, and Amazon, as well as newer entrants like airbnb, Uber, and Dropbox, can be applied to solving larger problems than where to sleep, how to get a cab, or where and how our data are accessed. We need the best minds of our society focused on larger problems – but first, we need to collectively believe that problem is as large as it most likely is.”

Such a shift requires more than one year to happen. I’d judge myself harshly here – what I predicted simply did not happen. However, I do believe that 2014 was the beginning of it happening, and I reserve the right to come back to this post a few years from now, and claim that I called the beginning of a multi-year, secular shift toward “the Internet adopting the planet as its cause.” At least, I certainly hope I can.

Score: .000

2. Automakers adopt a “bring your own” approach to mobile integration.

Automobiles are in the “mobile experience” market, and until recently, it looked like they were going to try to keep their customers from bringing Apple, Google, and other tech brands directly into the driving environment. I noted that the auto industry changes painfully slowly, but 2014 would be the year things shifted to one where consumers began integrating their own smartphone environments directly into their driving experience. And while there is still a long way to go, it seems I was right.

Just this month, for example, Ford announced it was dropping its seven year partnership with Microsoft for a Blackberry’s ONX operating system. Seems like small news, till you look under the covers and see what it really means: using QNX allows Ford’s customers to easily integrate their iPhones or Android devices with their cars. Apple and Google seem to be taking a dual-pronged approach to the automobile – work with the industry to allow simple integrations between the phone and the car (contact lists, phone calls, some apps), while at the same time announcing far more ambitious plans to become the entire operating system for those cars in the future (for Apple, it’s CarPlay, for Google, it’s Android Auto).

Overall, I think I got this one largely right.

Score: .750

3. By year’s end, Twitter will be roundly criticized for doing basically what it did at the beginning of the year.

Twitter went public in November of 2013, and in my predictions two months later, I wrote: “The world loves a second act, and will demand one of Twitter now that the company is public…its moves in 2014 will likely be incremental. This is because the company has plenty of dry powder in the products and services it already has in its arsenal – it’ll roll out a full fledged exchange, a la FBX, it’ll roll out new versions of its core ad products (with a particular emphasis on video), it’ll create more media-like “events” across the service, it’ll continue its embrace of television and popular culture…in other words, it will consolidate the strengths it already has. And 12 months from now, everyone will be tweeting about how Twitter has run out of ideas. Sound familiar, Facebook?”

For the most part, this is pretty much what has happened. For Twitter, 2014 has been a year of piling on, in particular for Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who was given a vote of no confidence in the Wall St. Journal this November.  And what has Costolo failed to do? Apparently, the same thing everyone else has failed to do over the past seven or so years: Define exactly what Twitter is supposed to be, even as the service kept growing and delighting the world. But let’s get real: in the four years Costolo has been CEO, Twitter has gone from zero to more than a billion in revenue – a feat that puts the company in the rarified air of Google, Facebook, Uber, and precious few others.

It strikes me that Costolo’s biggest error in judgement was to let Twitter go public in an environment where the stock was vastly over-valued. His stock debuted at $26, closed above $40,  and was pushed past $70 before it was retreated to its current price of $36 or so. Unfortunately, the market’s expectations of Twitter far outpaced the company’s true value, which was extraordinary to begin with. And so, one year later, Twitter is “roundly criticized for doing basically what it did at the beginning of this year” – struggle to define just what Twitter actually is, but at the same time, produce an invaluable service that has managed to grow revenues at a blistering pace. My own view boils down to this: Ignore Wall Street, and focus on Twitter’s plans in mobile services. More on that in my predictions post.

Score: 1000

4. Twitter and Apple will have their first big fight, most likely over an acquisition.

Well, I have no idea whether this one was true. It certainly didn’t break out into the mainstream news if it did happen. I mentioned that entertainment would most likely be where the two companies diverged, as I view that to be an area both want to play (most notably music and video). Apple certainly made its play there with Beats, but there’s not been any word of a “fraying relationship” between Twitter and Apple that I’m aware of. As far as I know, I whiffed on this one.

Score: .000

5. Google will see its search related revenues slow, but will start to extract more revenues from its Android base.

Yep. Search revenues have been slowing for years, but 2014 was the year everyone woke up to it. As the NYT reported this October: “The thing that worries investors, though, is that the company’s golden goose — its search engine — is showing signs of age.” Put another way, search revenues are not growing as quickly as they once were – Q3 grew 17% y/y, compared to Q2, which grew 25% on the same measure. But the piece also noted a strong uptick in Google’s Android-based Play store revenues – up 50% year on year. Combine that with Google’s focus on consolidating its control of the Android ecosystem, and I think I got this one pretty much right.

Score: 1000

6. Google Glass will win – but only because Google licenses the tech, and a third party will end up making the version everyone wants.

Whoa. What was I thinking? I was right in some details – in the post I suggested the price will go down by half, and sure, you can get used Glass for half price or better on eBay – but I whiffed again here. Not much happened with Google Glass this year, and no third party ended up making the version everyone else wanted. And I’m not sure anyone ever will.

Score: .000

7. Facebook will buy something really big. 

Um….yup. Twice. I suggested it might be Dropbox or Evernote, but Facebook went for WhatsApp and Oculus, among many others. I suggested that Facebook needed to admit it had “become a service folks use, but don’t live on anymore,” and that the company would continue to buy its way to its core user base, as it had with Instagram. I was right, but I picked the wrong horses.

Score: .750.

So looking at all my predictions, how did I average? Well, on seven attempts, I whiffed three times, nailed it twice, and hit .750 on two more. An average of .570, if you use “hits” as your base, but a less impressive .314 if you just add up the numbers and divide by 7.  I’ll let you decide which it was, and meantime, look forward to doing better next year. My Predictions 2015 post is coming, but most likely will wait till this weekend. Happy new year, everyone!