Changes in technology and their impact on the world have been relentless over the last few years, and 2012 doesn’t look to be any different. Below is a list of predictions and trends for 2012.

Social networking continues to dominate

The number of global Facebook users reached 700 million in 2011, and is predicted to reach 1 billion in 2012. While growing fast in countries like Brazil, Facebook already dominates social networking in the West. Twitter’s rise, especially in the media, looks set to continue. Social networking played a key role in the civil unrest of 2011, most noticeably in the ‘Arab Spring’, and we can expect to see more people organise online this year. This is the year that companies are going to attempt to drive a lot of their sales directly through social networking, although I’m a bit sceptical about this being successful. People primarily use social media to socialise and not to shop.

Traditional journalism has had a tough time of it recently. With so much content now available for free online, newspaper sales have been falling steadily for years with free papers representing the only growth area.

The launch of ‘The Daily’ by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation marks an interesting experiment for a news industry facing an uncertain future.

‘The Daily’ is an online newspaper with a new approach. It is a gamble on the future of devices we will use as it is not available on desktops or standard laptops. This new newspaper is only available on the iPad but there are plans to launch on other tablets systems soon like Google’s ‘Honeycomb’. Murdoch believes these sleek new devices are perfect for displaying news, and the design of the ‘app’ makes the most of the screen, with beautifully rendered rich media on the hi-resolution machine.