2012 brought many exciting new
gadgets in the technology world. Unfortunately, where there is success failure is
also inevitable. Some were more obvious than others; Apple Maps for example was
much hyped up and turned out to be nothing to brag about. Luckily for Apple the
iPhone 5 was not as much of a disappointment so I don’t think they’ll be going
broke anytime soon. Another highly
anticipated event this year was the Facebook IPO, it started the day at $38 a
share to go soaring to a whopping $38 a share.
Eventually the stock dropped to $18 a share and has since balanced out
at about $28 a share according to cnn.com. Again, I doubt Mark Zuckerberg is
starving today but it goes to show you that things do not always go as
expected. Sean Parker’s latest and greatest was a new chat tool called Airtime,
any idea what I am talking about? Probably not since it too was not all it was
hyped up to be.
Personally I am a big fan of the
online coupon deals, Groupon and Living Social being at the top of the list.
However even though they all started at the top of their game in the beginning
of the year, they experienced a significant decline as the year went on. Nexus Q, a media streamer for Android, was
Google’s big downer for the year. Not
having enough exposure it fell on deaf ears when released in June. They said it
hasn’t completely been dumped yet but I would not try to run and get one, they
are listed as unavailable on the Google online store.
SOPA was not one of Congress’s
best laid plans afterall. While the Stop Online Piracy Act had good intentions,
it went too far. And apparently Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Wikipedia, among
others, had enough clout to put the kibosh on SOPA. CNN also notes that the next wave of social
media apps were to include the ability to meet strangers, social discovery apps
they were coined as. And while the idea certainly seems like a good idea, more
often than not users, mostly female, found the concept to be less than
appealing. Its one thing to use
technology to keep in touch but is it really necessary to use it to meet people
in the same room!? Come on people make a little effort would you?Another app failure was Color, a photo sharing mobile app. Unfortunately, it was a complete failure out of the gate, as most of these instances above were. Instagram seemed to get it right though so its certainly wasn’t about a failed concept. While Zynga still remains one of the most popular gaming app companies it too is seeing a drop in profits. One of main reasons for the downturn for the company was the purchase of Draw Something. It was fun for a minute and then most users lost interest, including myself. Zynga dropped $180 million on the game.
And the last major tech failure cited by CNN for 2012 is the ever increasing amount of stupidity brought about by Twitter and its tweeters. They make note that the site gave many celebrities and companies the opportunity to make total jackasses of themselves. If you ask me stupidity will find a way to emerge no matter the outlet available so I wouldn’t call that one a tech failure.
So what’s to come for 2013? Who knows but I’m sure it will be filled with some exciting events creating great wealth for some and putting many others on the chopping block.
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