One of my favorite parts of the Web 2.0 conferences run by O'Reilly/CMP is the 15 minute quickfire presentation done every year by Mary Meeker. There is always a wealth of fascinating data about Web trends and products, which Meeker hits you with at a mllion miles an hour. Luckily in this case her presentation was up on the Morgan Stanley website when she came on stage, so I got to listen instead of frantically typing soundbotes. This year there were 48 slides (a record for Meeker at Web 2.0!) and you can download them here.
Along with the usual trends such as mobile uptake and China growth (which are present in all Meeker presentations at Web 2.0), here are some of the lesser known trends that I learned about:
We're now in two cycles in the "Cloud" age - broadband and wireless. This is seen in new products like Apple iPhone, 3 Skype Phone, Amazon Kindle, the upcoming Google ‘GPhone’. Also Meeker noted that there will be a "critical mass inflection point" for 3G in 2009. Meeker predicts a "new generation of Internet leaders to capitalize on growing access to fast Internet access on mobiles".
Some interesting data points this year about the growth in Enterprise web 2.0. Slide 12 notes that the "next wave of corporate productivity gains should be paced by Web 2.0 driven collaboration tools that use the network as the platform to enable users to connect ‘any device to any content over any combination of networks’ (John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems, 5/22/07)". Related to this, enterprises may be coming out of a "relative purchasing funk" (slide 13).
Meeker noted a few times that the US economy is a worry and that US in general is slipping behind China - and other countries such as India and South Korea are exhibiting very strong growth in technology. Specifically Meeker said that the US is "less relevant to global economy" nowadays - although judging by the rest of her slides on tech companies, the US still dominates the technology business. Still, Internet user growth is fastest in non-US markets according to Meeker.
The following slide regarding Internet trends is worth highlighting in its entirity:
Also check out this slide highlighting international Web trends:
Personalization and recommendation systems are trends we discuss a lot here on Read/WriteWeb. Meeker called this out nicely in a slide about Amazon.com, a company that puts a lot of this theory into successful practise:
Other great data points include: strong growth in online music (sales up 107% over the past year); Skype/VoIP growing near 100% per annum too; there is a "battle for platforms" in social networking, advertising, payments, commerce and mobile devices (Meeker described this one as a "rugby scrum").
Finally Meeker referenced a group of Internet companies, including YouTube, digg, Joost. The most interesting one of course this year is Facebook, which Meeker said had experienced extraordinary growth over the past year:
Meeker noted that Zuckerberg was 11 when Netscape did its IPO and wasn't born when microsoft went public, but Meeker said that Zuckerberg "thinks differently and we think that's a good thing".
Overall, some fantastic data points as usual. Let us know in the comments what you think of these trends and what in particular interests you. For me, it is the different kinds of web tech products we are seeing coming from (and for) the International market. Plus the new kinds of Web apps for mobile devices. These are things we will explore more on R/WW.
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Last week I attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. This is the third year running I've attended - I went to the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference in October 2005, the 2006 Web 2.0 Summit in November 2006 (it... Read More
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Thanks for this extremely interesting post (and the download access to Meeker's presentation). Having just returned from Asia where virtually everything (virtual or real) is on the mobile I think Mary Meeker's comments on quicker faster mobile internet access can't be wrong...and are so right, the rest of the world should take a close look at what's happening in the East.
Posted by: Caroline | October 18, 2007 1:06 PMOn a European note, there are some interesting discussions happening on the following blog (in French with the occasional burst of English), notably on imagining where a totally tactile intelligent world is going to take us:
http://b-r-ent.com/news/a-la-recherche-de-la-navigation-de-demain
The life style of east and Europe are different from here at US. In Asia,for instance, there are few private rooms available and most people don't drive. These make mobile internet much more useful. On the other hand, at US, we either drive or at home, there is less need to use mobile internet.
Posted by: Norman | October 18, 2007 5:24 PMThe life style of east and Europe are different from here at US. In Asia,for instance, there are few private rooms available and most people don't drive. These make mobile internet much more useful. On the other hand, at US, we either drive or at home, there is less need to use mobile internet.
Posted by: Norman | October 18, 2007 5:24 PMI found this section particularly interesting: "next wave of corporate productivity gains should be paced by Web 2.0 driven collaboration tools that use the network as the platform to enable users to connect ‘any device to any content over any combination of networks’.
It would be great if R/WW could do a follow up on this in later posts. I think web2.0 is ready for the enterprise pretty soon, and it would be great to see some analysis on the trends in this market.
Posted by: Lars Teigen | October 19, 2007 1:44 AMPotential recession could mean the consolidation of web 2.0 companies. It is interesting to see the emerging of the web 2.0 leaders and next web 2 "google".
Posted by: Norman | October 19, 2007 3:07 AMYou can find a video of this presentation on blib.tv.
Really worth watching, both the slides and the video.
Thanks for the post.
Posted by: Markus | October 19, 2007 4:27 PM