Top 2005 eBusiness Trends

Here's a list of Top 10 eBusiness Trends for 2005, from eMarketer.com. It's a far-reaching list, covering many different technologies:

• Alternative Advertising: Major brand owners are concerned about TV commercials losing eyeballs, and so they will be spending more of their advertising budgets in different arenas. The big winners will be online, including rich media and overall online ad spending. Also, marketers are figuring out how to incorporate the Internet into word-of-mouth marketing. (And many word of mouth campaigns will involve blogs.)





• RSS: Not only will usage of RSS newsfeeds grow, but marketers will attempt to leverage them for advertising.





• AOL Changes: AOL has lost 4 million subscribers in two years and will have to change its business. It will begin to make a larger percentage of revenues from online advertising. (Of course, we all know its ISP service is a bit of a dinosaur in these days of cheap, pervasive broadband and great Web browers.)





• On-Demand TV: Time-shifted viewing and ad-skipping, together with video on demand, are changing the television landscape.





• Wireless Broadband: We will start to see more video on our cellphones.





• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): Big-box retailers like Wal-Mart are mandating that vendors implement RFID inventory tracking. (If you want to know more, please visit my other blog, the RFID Weblog.)





• Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP): Businesses and consumers are finally becoming aware of voice calls over the Internet, in growing numbers.





• Linux: Linux adoption in the enterprise continues, especially as companies upgrade servers.





• Cross-Channel Retail: Expect increasing integration of retailer efforts across all platforms: Web, catalog and stores.





• IT Security: You've heard it before, but the message is the same this year again: security will be a top spending priority among CIOs.

Editor's Note: This is the tenth in our series of articles on 2005 trends predictions. We are comparing and contrasting trends predictions from different sources that will impact the small business market in 2005 and beyond. Here is our running list of trend prediction posts:

Anti-Trending and Other Trends for 2005

Entrepreneur's Top Trends for 2005

Small Business is Itself a Trend

Top Technology Trends for 2005

Top Global Consumer Trends

Inc.'s Trends for Entrepreneurs in 2005

Top Travel Trends for 2005

More Top Trends for 2005

The Small Business Advocate's 2005 Predictions