What is the B2B buzz word or phrase of 2008? The other day, I read that just as Web 2.0 was the hot topic of 2007, this will be the year of Web TV. True – lots of business brands are latching on to the medium – Deloitte, HP and Tenon all immediately spring to mind – but it got me thinking about what else might end up emerging as the B2B ‘toy’ of choice for 2008.

Now I’m not a marketing expert so I don’t know the answer – but I am a journalist so I’m interested to find out. So I thought I’d put the question to you experts out there; tell me what you think will be big this year. Since everybody seems to love i-Pod’s, is podcasting the new best way to do direct mail? Or are you all planning virtual events? (Personally, the idea of attending an exhibition where the speaker is a ‘not really there’ 3D hologram scares the hell out of me but all the same, I’d be interested to see how it works). Maybe this is the year that Bluetooth will have its moment in the spotlight, now that it’s been removed from the ICO’s list of regulated opt-in media. 

Personally, my money is on mobile marketing taking off in the B2B space in some way, whether its through Bluetooth or otherwise. I can’t give you any stats for it, but I’d be willing to bet that most people – especially the business types you see glued to their high-tech Blackberry’s on the train, bus or street, spend more time looking at their phones in an average day than they do a newspaper or the TV. Plus, your phone is with you all the time. I bet anybody reading this is closer to their phone right now than they are their copy of the morning paper, radio or TV.

I don’t think the opportunities for B2B will be as obvious as beaming ads in return for free calls, like is all the rage in B2C land. What I think will be interesting for business brands is the ability to network using their phones, conference style. Look at LinkedIn’s new launch of a mobile service – they obviously think they’re onto a trick there.

Which reminds me of another trend that I definitely think the B2B space will start to own this year; social networking. We all seem to be getting a bit Facebook fatigued, but business networking sites are rising steadily in popularity, and the trend seems to be to set up a site aimed at a specific niche. It makes sense as far as I can see – I’ve thought for a while now that in the consumer space, Bebo will soon overtake Facebook because Bebo is aimed at more of a niche – i.e. the teen market, whereas Facebook tries a bit too hard to be all things to all people. In the B2B space, the likes of the FT and Adobe who are setting up social networking sites to target certain industry sectors are in with a good chance of making something sustainable that might well be around long after everyone has grown tired of sending each other boozemails or imaginary fish on FB.

Anyway enough about my predictions – what are yours?