<i>In the next few years, websites will no longer have same messages and content for everyone, but rather completely personalized in terms of the content (and even layout and design) served completely through implicit personalization powering implicit discovery based on what I like and prefer.</i><p>Not being a rich man, I'd put down $100 on a carefully worded bet that this is not broadly true at the end of 2016.<p>My experience is that, broadly speaking, people are relying upon strong editorial brands and direction more than ever, rather than automated curation and personalization. Many of these brands <i>are</i> social or curation-based (Gruber, Techmeme, the swell of e-mail newsletters, Hacker News even) but full on personalization has failed (and, IMHO, will continue to fail) to take off at the publication level.<p>It's not as if we've lacked for algorithms, news sources, or the technology to do this, and both companies and people have kept coming along with the personalization promise. While it appeals to my geekier side, I'm starting to think these promises are just sales pitches from people with algorithms to sell rather than a solid grip on both the media and what readers actually want.<p>Like RSS, a certain audience - mostly the more technically inclined - will stick with it, but I don't see a big swing into all-personalization-all-the-time working out long term in the mass market. But now I've said it out loud, I'm prepared to be linked back to this in several years when I'm proven wrong ;-)