The following are my unsolicited and rather unorganized predictions for 2007. Think I’m wrong? Think I’m crazy? Let me know in the comments.

In 2006, we conceptualized Web 2.0. We determined what it was about, the theories and ideas that made it happen. We perfected our AJAX and polished our gradients, creating the beginnings of a social web.

The problem though, was that Web 2.0, generally, did not get past the tech community. Really, does your family share in the joys of social bookmarking? Do your friends obsess over the wonders of The Long Tail? I’d venture to say no. It isn’t anyone’s fault, it is simply that we have built up the architecture for a revitalised internet, but haven’t brought in the general public to experience it.

This will change in 2007. Sure, folks already enjoy the wonders that MySpace has brought us. Even a site like Digg has thrust itself into the top sites online (at least according to Alexa, but who trusts Alexa?). But I’m not talking about those sites, I’m talking about the underbelly of the web that will effectively change how you operate, collaborate, and socialize. Digg is a glorified message board. A pretty one, a fancy one, but that’s what it is. MySpace is debatably Web 1.0 - it’s only saving grace is the ideals behind the site. It certainly doesn’t employ Web 2.0 design or development techniques.

No, those sites will get to the public easily, they aren’t breaking the mold. But sites that challenge the very way we run our lives such as event-management platforms, or the way we compute such as online office suites, will make 2007 the year to break into the public eye. I have no doubt of this, in fact we’ve already seen this with Digg which I mentioned before. Digg is arguably the first web 2.0 site to achieve mainstream success, and is leading the way for other services.

The effects are obvious and far-reaching. Unlike the first web boom, web 2.0 is largely created by small teams (as opposed to major companies). The burst of traffic that these sites receive will cause several things:

1. Web hosts will need to acclimate to a new mid-range market where affordability is key. Media Temple’s excellent (gs) Grid Server has already foreshadowed this new market. Systems such as (gs) Grid Server will prove doubly useful because of the unpredictable nature of the social web - no one can predict the Digg effect.
2. Buyouts will be plentiful, and so will sell-outs. eBay has become the new hot spot for websites to sell themselves out, expect that to continue (and increase in frequency). The management costs will be too much. Tucows took the leap and bought an eBay sell-out (Kiko), I see this as being the norm too (larger companies buying dead property on eBay). Easier than other methods!

As such, it won’t be a bubble like the last time around - it will be an implosion, but not necessarily an implosion leading to the deaths of these products. Businesses will collapse and be rolled up into larger companies. Don’t be surprised to see investors take advantage of the situation by buying these dead companies and merging them under one banner.

Ultimately though, the products will stagnate because they are no longer labors of love. The people who built the application out of enjoyment and excitement for their ideas will be long gone, leaving programmers-for-hire to finish the job and maintain everything for profit, sacrificing an ideal that I think is core to web 2.0 - people before profit.

And that’s how it’ll go down. Promise*.

* = Not an actual promise.