In this post we take a closer look at the paradigm shifts of the web, especially for the near future. What approaches have dominated the web over the years and which ones failed; and why? Also, since Facebook is already widely accepted as the next big thing, the new question is: what is the next "next big thing"? Is it already out there? To start with check out the graph below, summarizing the Web's stages up till now and our vision for the future:
As you can see, the current trend is for social interactions to take over search as the pivot of the internet. But if you're not convinced, here are a few examples of why:
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One of my pet peeves currently is when people badly submit an article to digg. It is bad for both digg readers (who may never get to see the article because it was dugg badly) and of course for the publishers. It's definitely a flaw in the digg system. But there is a relatively easy solution for this problem, which I'd like to suggest here.
First let me explain what I mean by a 'badly dugg post'. Take for example Alex's excellent post here about Apple's iPhone strategy. It explains why the iPhone is more than just a breakthrough mobile phone device - that it's a strategy that may expand Apple's sphere of influence, from web browsing to social networking and even possibly search. Now look at the digg submission for that post:
Google's 2007 acquisition spree has continued, with the acquisition of GrandCentral - a service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. Interestingly, Google says they bought GrandCentral because it fits well with their other services that "enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users." In other words, this is yet another Web Office play from Google.
In today's increasingly virtual and fragmented workforce, a service such as GrandCentral is an ideal complement to other Web Office tools such as GTalk, Gmail and Docs&Spreadsheets. As Josh Catone wrote in his post Rolling Your Own Online Office, the key to a successful distributed team is communication. And GrandCentral is a service that makes telephone communication much easier and gives more control to the user - e.g. you can set rules as to what calls you accept and when, and even hear why someone is calling before taking the call.
Our sister site AltSearchEngines has just published their latest Top 100 Alt Search Engine list, which is eagarly anticipated every month. This month's list has 'gone global' - from now on there will always be 10 slots reserved for International Alts. This acknowledges that there are many good search engines out there that do not have English as their ‚Äúfirst language‚Ä? (although they may or may not have an English version), and are not headquartered in the USA or UK.
Perhaps to celebrate the new international flavor of The List, ASE Editor Charles Knight has chosen a Russian search engine as this month‚Äôs Search Engine of the Month. Dialogus is a new generation search engine that automatically searches for answers to questions. When you ask Dialogus a question, it processes it like any natural language (Semantic, ‚Äúmeaning-based,‚Ä? Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Artificial Intelligence AI) search engine might, but it does it in plain view.
Newspaper circulation has been on the decline over the past few years, but the traffic to newspaper websites continues to rise. Interestingly, the area of newspaper websites that has experienced the most growth is blogs, perhaps proving that new media formats are beginning to usurp old media in earnest.
As we reported on Saturday, CNN.com went live with a redesigned version of their website over the weekend. I thought it might be interesting to compare three big media sites that have launched new versions of their web news properties in 2007: CNN (redesigned this weekend), USA Today (redesigned in March), and AOL News (redesigned last week). I'll look at the different approaches each news outlet took, and what cues they took from web 2.0.
Alex Iskold has written a compelling post, arguing that iPhone is more than just a breakthrough mobile phone device. Alex says it's a strategy that may expand Apple's sphere of influence, from web browsing to social networking and even possibly search. So to complement Alex's post, our poll this week asks: what has Steve Jobs got his eye on next? Please take part in our poll below:
iPhone is more than just a breakthrough mobile phone device. It is a strategy that may expand Apple's sphere of influence, from web browsing to social networking and even possibly search.
The iPhone is here. The blogosphere is echoing with both great praise and cries of problems. The hype was both met and a bit too much. Overall, it seems that both media and users are underwhelmed with the iPhone as the phone. And people are not overly excited about yet another iPod, because we've had plenty of those over the last few years. Yet, iPhone is important and possibly game changing - because it could be the first mobile device to truly bring a rich web experience to a mobile device. With iPhone and the latest release of Safari for Windows, Apple has openly jumped into the browser wars. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, iPhone could be Apple's foray into the world of social networking. Let's take a deeper look along each of these axes.
