It’s time to put my finger on the air and throw up some tech predictions for 2009. As always, I will try to concrete them all, so that my chances of mistaking myself will be very strong. BTW, last year I got some of them, even if I did not anticipate some things which finally became true: Facebook Connect (we all thought Google would do this), the growth of social network Tuenti in Spain, Mobuzz in bankruptcy or the Obama effect on Politics 2.0 maturity.
These are my predictions for 2009:
– Google will buy Twitter (I have read this somewhere else)
– Telefónica (Spanish main telecoms operator) will buy Tuenti (Spanish largest social network among young people)
– Varsavsky will either sell or close down Fon
– Zapatero (Spanish president) will name Lourdes Muñoz (main politician blogging right now in Spain) his official blogger.
– Android will be in 30% of mobile phones
– One of the largest TV stations in the world will go on bankruptcy
– Twitter will become a big ground for social e-commerce ads
– Everything will become socially powered, as the crisis will take us back to the people we know and trust and away from big corporations. 2.0 banks will boom.

And these were my predictions for the year ending:
– Big Spanish companies will launch 2.0 plans and will start using collaboration tools. It is happening… but so slowly.
– Enrique Dans (main Spanish business blogger) will leave his job (as a professor of a business school) and launch a startup. I think crisis stopped him, though he became a shareholder of blogs company Weblogs, SL.
– Politics 2.0 will once again disappoint us. Yes, but only in Spain. Things are changing, thanks to Obama.
– Facebook will buy Twitter and Xing. Almost!
– Media will buy big Internet companies. Unfortunately they did not do it. This explains why they are doing so bad.
– E-commerce will boom. Yes! Privalia and BuyVip’s successes show us the way things have to be done in Spain.
– Carlos Blanco (one of the main Spanish business angels) will sell his company, Grupo ITNet. Not yet.
– Nacho Escolar (top blogger and director of one of Spain’s newspapers) will get back to the Internet. Not yet.
– Martin Varsavsky will sell Fon to BT and create a political party for entrepeneurs. He almost did it.
– Videomessages will substitute SMS. Not yet.