We had a fun time over at Read/WriteWeb, getting out predictions for 2008. Checkout the original post for what other writers predict. Here is what I put down:

1. 2008 will be slow and cautious, with the first half dominated by recession or fear of recession.
2. Facebook is going to see the same kind of decline in popularity in 2008 that MySpace saw in 2007.
3. Digg is going to be acquired by one of the mainstream media conglomerates.
4. Implicit applications, which monitor our habits and automatically infer our likes, will rise.

The first one is obvious, because that’s all we hear on the radio these days. As I drive into the city and commentators from Bloomberg interview top fund managers, the first word out of their mouse is the ‘R’ word. Some of them say we are in it, some say we are heading into it and most of them are saying we will avoid it. Lets hope that the last group is right and we will recover in the second half of the year.

I am bearish on Facebook because it has been so overhyped in 2007. Yes it is interesting and powerful and unique, but it is not all that. I personally use it mostly to Twitter and I know that other members of AdaptiveBlue are not spending much time on it. People do not care about the zoo of applications on other people’s profiles and constant updates in news feed are becoming less and less relevant. All said and done, Facebook is not worth 15B valuation put on it in 2007 and in the next year, we will be seeing some adjustments, particularly as the concerns about “R” word will bring down the advertising spendings.

Digg has been in line to be acquired and in 2008 it will be. Not much more to say about that.

And then Implict Web and implicit applications. These new breeds of applications that observe our behavior and then just do the right thing at the right time are going to become more common. From financial applications like Wesabe and Mint to already a mega-hit, Last.fm, to new wireless applications that are going to launch next year we will see implicit applications rise.

AdaptiveBlue is going to be very much part of the implicit web. We are planning versions of the BlueOrganizer and SmartLinks that are heavily based on implicit behavior, that learn as you interact with them and connect you with the right information automatically. 2008 we will be big year of implicit for AdaptiveBlue.

Beyond the implicit theme, we have very specific plan and the roadmap for 2008. Here are pieces of this roadmap and vision that we can share now:

1. We will release an update of the BlueOrganizer in early January, which will automatically insert SmartLinks in every context.
2. Around end of February we are planning a BlueOrganizer Indigo - the next generation of the BlueOrganizer with innovative UI and other major improvements.
3. We are going to raise the next round of funding in first half of the year
4. We are going to expand the team and hire more engineers another designer and an evangelist.
5. And in the late spring there will be a big release that has not been named yet and we can not talk much about, but it will be one of the most interesting things that we have done to date. Stay tune for this one :)

2007 has been a huge year for us. We went from tiny team with sweet taste of success at DEMOfall to a funded startup that is considered to be a serious player in the pragmatic semantic technologies. We hit many milestones and delivered a lot of innovation. The things we built in 2007 will become strong pillars for the ambitious play that we plan for 2008.

With that, my final prediction is that we will have more and happier users. So many of you have using our products and have been very kind to us, that it is simply humbling. When we see our stuff used around the web, we know that we are on the right track. This makes us push even harder. We look forward to innovating and making people happy in 2008!