My 5 tech predictions for 2016

What can we expect in the tech industry this year? Here are my predictions.

1. Minecraft will continue to grow as a business

Released in 2009, Minecraft is an old game. By 2013, they were growing like crazy ($330 million that year, a reported 38% increase).

Now owned by Microsoft, I don’t see Minecraft slowing down. My three boys are still playing it constantly. Their favorite version of the game is on the PC, where they can hack it with mods, new maps, and skins. My oldest is on Skype almost every night playing it with his friends. My guess is he watches at least 2–3 Minecraft related YouTube videos a day.

This was my tweet from last year at Christmas (the same thing happened this year):

Minecraft is going to continue to grow. Their new Story Mode app has done very well. And there’s tons of other opportunities Microsoft could take advantage of:

1. A mod store: downloading mods is a pain. You have to go to sketchy sites, sit through sketchy ads, and download sketchy .jar files. Your version of Forge has to matches up with the version of the mod. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: kids see a cool mod on YouTube, and want you to install it. If Microsoft offered an “app store” thousands of parents would line up to buy.
2. Minecraft focused PCs: A Minecraft branded gaming PC would have been the biggest hit of the holiday season. Minecraft is better on a PC. Once kids discover how much versatile the PC version is (as opposed to the “Pocket Edition”) they don’t want to go back. Microsoft is building their own hardware now (the Surface) and could easily go into this territory.

2. More big-name blogs will switch to Medium

We’ve already seen Signal vs Noise and Matter join the platform, and we’ll see others do the same.

The attraction? Audience reach. Publications, bloggers and companies aren’t seeing the same kind of traction they used to see on their self-hosted blogs. Medium seems to have a built-in audience that engages with content, and shares it.

3. An increase in native advertising

You can’t host a pop-up ad on Medium. If more publishers move to the platform, we’re going to see more subtle forms of advertising. You’ll notice that Adobe is sponsoring a lot of Medium posts. That’s one form advertising will take. We’ll also see ads like these; original material that’s funny and engaging, but is also being sponsored content. Podcast sponsorship (where the host reads the ad, and often personally endorses the product) is another form.

4. You’ll see more viral videos on Facebook first

Facebook has been aggressively pursuing online video. I’m noticing way more video in my Facebook news feed. They have a feature where videos silently start auto-playing as you scroll past. YouTube will remain the place you go to find a video; but Facebook will be the place you see a video first. It’s passive discovery, and my hunch is that it’s working.

5. Yahoo’s slims down

In many models, Yahoo’s core business has an implied valuation of less than zero. (Forbes India)

After 3 years of attempted turnaround, Yahoo has failed to gain traction. My guess is Yahoo abandons search and focuses on remaining products where it has a foothold (most notably, mail). That’s going to mean a lot of layoffs.

I don’t see any more acquisitions. They’ve spent $3 billion so far. Aviate, Polyvore and Distill have turned into very expensive aqui-hires. Tumblr is running ads, but far from profitable.

Marisa Meyer’s position as CEO is definitely under fire, but I’m guessing she makes it through 2016. Her big job will be engineering a way to make Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba profitable for shareholders.