Venture Fundings Hit $29.4 Billion in 2007: The Year in Charts
All I can say is wow. This news from the past year added to the inevitability of a recession hitting the United States in 2008 makes me think. It makes me think I’m glad I chose to pursue web design when I graduated from college over 8 years ago.
This isn’t to say thinks won’t be getting rocky for the web world – they will. Although it might not be directly related to the economy, Yahoo! is laying off a chunk of people soon, but I feel optimistic about online growth for 2008.
First off, for the last 6 years or so, online ad spending continues to grow. Add to this the explosion of video on the web and converging video products and technologies and you got a breeding ground for opportunity.
I’m also excited to see broadcast television get their internet training wheels off and start producing some genuinely solid alternatives to, compliments to and partnerships with Apple’s iTunes Store. iTunes is not the end-all be-all of online media purchasing models. Once old media starts taking notes from Radiohead, MySpace’s record label, and all the yet-to-be-discovered opportunities for their content, they’ll start making some progress (read: They’ll start making customers happy). They need to let go of DRM and embrace multiple distribution channels at their disposal – cable TV doesn’t just get delivered through a cable anymore.
The TV writers’ strike isn’t hurting online media either.
Despite what director David Lynch thinks, portable viewing is only getting more popular, and in peoples’ busy lives, they like their media bit-sized.