Forrester estimates that close to 100 million Near Field Communication (NFC) devices will ship in 2012. As it finally moves past the chicken-or-egg stalemate of the past five years, contactless technology is once again causing buzz in the mobile world. The 2012 London Olympics will be a showcase and marketing catalyst for NFC services. Will NFC join the cemetery of overhyped telecom acronyms, like DVB-H, or will it scale to enable new product experiences? We expect NFC usage to remain niche in 2012 and even 2013. However, moving forward, NFC will be embedded in most smartphones — and in a greater range of connected devices — enabling many more use cases than just contactless payments.

NFC Is Emerging As The Global Mobile Contactless Standard

With 100 million NFC mobile devices expected to ship globally by the end of 2012 and a growing NFC infrastructure, NFC is emerging as the standard for contactless solutions across the world. Pioneering countries include South Korea, Poland, Turkey, the UK, the US and to a lesser extent France.

Expectations For The Uptake Of Mobile Contactless Payments Are Too High

Turning adoption into mass-market usage among consumers will require not only a lot of market education but also, more importantly, the construction of a value proposition for consumers and merchants that goes well beyond convenience and speed to adding value to the entire commerce process. My colleague Denée Carrington has just published a report on this topic: “Why The Digital Wallet Wars Matter.”

NFC Will Open Up Many Other New Product And Service Experiences

A few minutes ago, Wildfire Interactive was purchased by Google for a reported $250 million. Of course, this is a lot of money, and a great exit for Wildfire investors, but what does it mean for social marketers, especially B2B social marketers? It is part of an ongoing trend of consolidation as many smaller vendors have been bought by major companies in the industry such as salesforce.com, Oracle, and now Google. Just looking at vendors I examined (with Kim Celestre) in our October 2011 Market Overview of Social Media Platforms for B2B Marketing (subscription required), many of them are no longer independent companies, and we expect this consolidation to only accelerate.

As a partial list, and please let me know if I missed any major acquisitions (of course, Yammer was bought by Microsoft, and Instagram by Facebook, but neither are external social marketing solutions for B2B marketers):

• Involver, July 2012, Oracle
• Collective Intellect, June 2012, Oracle
• Vitrue, $300M, May 2012, Oracle
• Buddy Media, $689M, May 2012, salesforce.com
• Crowd Factory, April 2012, Marketo
• Alterian, January 2012, SDL
• Radian6, $350M, March 2011, salesforce.com
• Unisfair, $35M March 2011, InterCall (West Corporation)

Is Facebook finally getting over itself?

Or, rather, is Facebook actually starting to realize that its place in the advertising ecosystem is just that – a place – not the whole answer, but rather a part of the answer?

If the recent news that Adometry will be allowed to place attribution tags inside the Facebook ecosystem is any indication, Facebook is starting to get the message. 

I personally think this is a HUGE deal. Probably because I’ve been shouting about the absolutely critical need for multitouch attribution for years and years (yep, well before joining Forrester, I promise), and continue my shouting from both the page and stage.

On its first quarterly earnings call, Facebook left it to Sheryl Sandberg to talk about how the company makes most of its money: marketing. And I was encouraged by how much she discussed the topic and how Sheryl stressed over and over the importance of proving ROI to advertisers. But I remain deeply unconvinced that Facebook can give marketers what they need, for two reasons:

1. Facebook thinks it can prove value in generalities. When Sheryl says she recognizes the importance of proving ROI to advertisers, she means that Facebook is trying to prove that Facebook marketing can work for advertisers in general — not that it does work for any one advertiser in particular. Facebook’s efforts here to date have been in generating a handful of case studies to which it can point: "Look! Facebook marketing worked for these three advertisers! That means it works!" But marketers don’t need proof that some Facebook marketing programs work; they need proof that their Facebook marketing program works. Better yet, they need to know which of their tactics are working and which aren't so that they can learn and improve. That would require better metrics for all marketers, rather than just a handful of case studies from a few marketers.