In honor of SXSW, which I sadly missed this year, here are my predictions for the next big areas of innovation on the web in the near future.  I am going to completely ignore mobile and geo, since it’s an area that everyone else is talking about (although I have been a fan of Geo as an interesting space for a while).

In no particular order:

1. CPG Advertising Moving To the Web.  And the mechanisms that will empower that. Some will come from the established web players, and some from brand new entrants. I’ll be blogging more about this topic shortly. 

2. Browser Innovation.  I’ve been an advisor to Shareaholic, a popular sharing app for Firefox and Chrome for a while.  I think there is a lot that is going to happen here soon, and I love the way Albert at USV reframes the space in hisrecent post.  

3. Educational Publishing.  No surprises here.  I’ve blogged about this too much that folks are probably totally annoyed by now. 

Honorable mention:

4. Innovation in Ecommerce.  There has been a few great posts about thisrecently. I totally agree, and I blogged about some areas that I think are interesting here a year ago. It’s great to see the excellent progress of companies like Groupon and Polyvore and others.  I continue to look for companies that address the poor buying experience in experiential categories, create new customer aggregation models, or address inefficient marketplaces.