The Web is Alive and Well (But on a Stable and Boring Platform)
Mark Cuban says the Internet is dead and boring, but Fred Wilson says it isn't for him! Who's right? Well, both of them. Let me quickly explain (before you get bored with what is actually a fairly pointless argument). Cuban wrote:
"Some people have tried to make the point that Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet is evolving. Actually it is the exact opposite. Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet has stopped evolving and stabilized as a platform. Its very very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing. Things stop working in that environment. Internet 1.0 wasn't the most stable development environment. To days Internet is stable specifically because its now boring.(easy to avoid browser and script differences excluded)"
(emphasis mine)
I mostly agree with Cuban on the emphasized point - web 2.0 has provided a stable platform. Indeed Alex Iskold coined a term to describe this, the Digestion Phase of the Internet. According to Alex this is "a period of time for us to reflect, to integrate, and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together."
Fred Wilson responds to Mark Cuban, saying that the Internet is very much alive and well for him:
"My delicious toolbar records my most visited web services. Typepad, Google Finance, Techmeme, Delicious, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, last.fm, hypemachine, yottamusic. I did not use one of those services 5 years ago. Not one of them!"
Which kind of proves Mark Cuban's point - because all of the apps Fred mentioned were built on a relatively stable 'web 2.0' platform. Social networks, RSS, blogging, recommendations, personalization, etc - all of these things define the current Web platform. And they are all relatively stable.
What this tells me is that a) yes the Web 2.0 platform is stable and "boring" (and I agree with the broadband issues Cuban raises, which Don Dodge riffs on), but b) in terms of what's been built on that platform, there are a lot of very exciting apps. And we still have a lot of innovation to explore - e.g. personalization seems to me to be in its early stages, for example Google hasn't even gotten past first base with its considerable personalization efforts this year.
It's steady as she goes - there are no new YouTubes, MySpaces, or other blockbuster web apps on the forseeable horizon. Facebook and Twitter have been the two web products to excite us most this year - but neither are on YouTube or MySpace's scale in terms of being a totally new and ground-breaking product being used by a mass audience. Facebook has eyes on going big mainstream, but it's still only gotten about 1/3 of the user base MySpace has.
So right now, we're in the digestion phase - time to think about how to build on existing apps and integrate technologies. In some ways that makes the Web a little boring, but it also gives many small startups the opportunity to build on a stable platform - which means excitement and a lot of consumer choice (ref Fred's list of apps he uses).
What do R/WW readers think about this - is the Web boring for you?
Top photo: merlinmann, from Web 1.0 Summit 2005
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It's interesting to consider the web as stable, with all the buzz about Flex and Silverlight and this competition between Adobe and Microsoft it does seem slightly unstable. Basically there's almost a renewed push to get people to build rich web apps but not on the web standards of XHTML / CSS / DOM but using these other technologies. I don't think either of these technologies can really take hold, and as a designer/developer and proponent of web standards based development I hope there isn't an increase in 'works in Silverlight' only web apps. Flex isn't perhaps such an issue but Silverlight's attempt to usurp Flash's ubiquity doesn't bring much benefit to the web in regards to developing a stable platform. Both Flash and Silverlight are an add-on to the backbone of HTML / CSS / DOM.
Sorry, bit of a web standard rant! My point is that I don't think the web is as stable as some may think, there's plenty of rumblings about the future of HTML (XHTML 2, HTML5, WHATWG etc etc), although perhaps that just enhances the point above about being in a digestion phase, that's probably about right. The internet is stable just now but it's future is a bit unstable with various ways directions that it could go.
Posted by: Rick Curran | August 26, 2007 4:38 PM
I disagree with Cuban. Web 2.0 is an evolution. So what if it is also a stable platform? It is a new platform that wasn't around a few years ago, thus an evolution.
With most things I agree with Mark, but not this point, nor his apparent support of Mahalo which no one could argue is an evolution (but i don't want to derail this thread too much).
I think that some of the tech that I have seen in the past year has been great for the net/web. Twitter, Facebook - this post sort of minimizes their impact but the people on the bleeding edge of the tech recognize its importance nonetheless.
No new video sharing sites or social networks? Are you crazy?
-William
Posted by: william | August 26, 2007 5:44 PM
Which kind of proves Mark Cuban's point - because all of the apps Fred mentioned were built on a relatively stable 'web 2.0' platform. Social networks, RSS, blogging, recommendations, personalization, etc - all of these things define the current Web platform
Social networks, recommendations and personalization were available before the term web-xxx was even born. The reason web-3.0 is not here is because, web-xxx is not a defined standards. It means that there is no organisation for such standards, where its members are required to vote and decide what functionality should be in web 3.0 and what are to be dropped from the specs. I have seen many dreamed up standards for web 3.0 across the world of blogosphere, for example, I read an article about proposing vertical search engine to be made web 3.0. Search algorithms of all sorts have been published and existed in the literatures over the last 15 years or so and it is growing at a phenomenon rate. Why would the so called web 3.0 be saying now that vertical search engine is something new to the web? This shows how arbitrary the web-xxx is. This is why I agreed with Eric Schmidt of Google, that web-xxx is a marketing term.
If I want to build a product or something innovative for the web, I wouldn't look around to see who is web-xxx compliant and who is not. I would build my app, using state of the art latest technology where consumers would likely to embrace. I would also make sure, that the functionality that I develop is superior to my competitors, irrelevant whether they call themselves web-xxx.
Posted by: Falafulu Fisi | August 26, 2007 5:54 PM
Define "foreseeable horizon"? Mark is a classic case of the guy who never lived in a pre-browser world of !addresses and ftp, so for him all innovation is defined by FireFox and IE. The Internet is bigger than his imagination.
Posted by: Joe Drumgoole | August 26, 2007 7:10 PM
Rick, those are excellent points and you're right, there is potential for the Web's foundations to splinter yet again.
William said: "Twitter, Facebook - this post sort of minimizes their impact but the people on the bleeding edge of the tech recognize its importance nonetheless."
RM: Oh I agree they are great technologies. My point was only that they haven't had anywhere near the impact of YouTube and MySpace. In other words, they aren't mainstream (altho with 31M active users, Facebook could argue otherwise).
Falafulu, I hear ya. I too think web 2.0 is a marketing term, but it has come to be the defining moniker for this current era of the Web - just as 'dot com' was the term for the previous era. I think it's useful to have a catch-all phrase for the current era of the Web, and web 2.0 fits the bill (everyone uses it now, incl mainstream media). Social networks, blogs etc are the things that have blossomed in this era. Perhaps personalization will really catch on over the next 2-3 years and be part of the next big wave.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 26, 2007 7:10 PM
The better question is: where is the internet going and what should change to make it more and more attractive.
One of the ways to look at the new internet is the way we view the web. Look at the direction SWOOT is going, or as David Blumenstein recently mentioned to me ‚Äúbrowserless browsing‚Ä?. Imagine you don‚Äôs need a browser to support your online content and it can freely float over the users desktop without borders and limits in design and functionality‚Ķ.
I think that would help getting rid of the boring part and exchange it to an amazing new way to show web content.
www.swoot.com
Posted by: Rogier Visser | August 27, 2007 12:00 AM
@ Rogier Visser. A world without browsers or interfaces would seem to lead in the opposite directions. A library without the interface of a digital card catalog is mindless wondering and mush. We need filters...and effective, human ones.
I'm am going to take the position closer to Cubans. I think folks need to wake up to three basic factors. First, we need better community interaction. Less than 1% of Facebook communities are actually communities. And probably only 5-7% of readers leave comments. Is our notion of what a community is just returned to information transfer? When Meetup looks 10x better by comparison in terms of community, perhaps we should re-think how much community is actually going on via web 2.0. Collaboration with Campfire is very collaborate and community oriented, but is probably only representative of 5% or less of what web 2.0 looks like. In line with the launch of Wordpress beta on monday....i think a great wordpress app for the basic setup (ie you don't have to plug in html code) would be something that allowed the blogger to leave questions for readers and the readers to leave questions for the blogger) sure an open meme could do it. But abscent this, the blog is still very much directed by the blog owner--not the readers. Just the same way of the old media newspaper conglomerates.
Second, we need better filters. Mahalo may be a step in the right direction (at least it seems better than Digg in some respects--or do we really love random that much)
Third, I think lowering the bar for folks that aren't computer savvy, such that the revolution is genuinely democratic. Less code and more options would be huge.
Fourth, web video that could stream on machines that are 3 years old. It exists, I think that more could be done and I think that web designers and web masters could be more sensitive to the needs of 1/3 to 1/2 of users. This is a fundamental issue of web democracy and equality. Its also a question of capitalism--you kill your customer base by not being sensitive to their digital needs. Its like handing them a copy of your info for window media player and all they have is quicktime. It sucks in terms of web usability. I don't care how slick your interface looks or what a great $5,000 video you have, if I can't freaking stream it smoothly. Folks talk about eco-racism. Failure to deal with this issue of usability is similarly morally suspect, because it leaves those very communities behind from the digital information revolution.
Thanks for reading. If you want to read more...you know what to do...
Posted by: Nathan Ketsdever | August 27, 2007 1:40 AM
well i can see thats an interesting post, and i agree on some points especially that no real new applications that made a revolution like YouTube or MySpace, but still there is a lot of ideas coming through and they will popup any second, so that's why i do not agree that the web is dead, because it is a very wide place that has no ends for sure.
regards,
jean
http://www.jean.ghalo.com
Posted by: Ghalo | August 27, 2007 1:57 AM
I guess being new doesn't equal being understood.
Swoot doesn't deliver just a new way of browsing or simply better experiencing the webcontent
It provides the absolut need for everyone to build something unique of their own on the web without the problem of being able to code HTML or even worse flash etc. Just design and use the ultra simple TAC code and publish on the web.
Beside that the TAC technology provides interaction because every application works as a server side object. This means it interacts along every other object on the web.
Last(for now) it provides the possibility to be directional, design the browser/taccel ( as we call it) and be in control over the directional objects, instead of designing a website that needs to be able to interact and work with the existing navigation of a webbrowser.
But our solution is not the holy grail or the best answer to a dead web. Just another direction.
look at www.swoot.nl/powerpoint and download the ppt. to understand it a little better. for the techs > http://www.swoot.com/swootorial/
web moving forward is needed, a lot of solutions are interesting and we will just have to wait and see where we will be heading!!
Posted by: Rogier Visser | August 27, 2007 3:31 AM
The most exciting potential for innovation isn't necessarily by improving our current platforms, but by making better connections between them. I wrote a post about four different platforms built on top of the Internet, which is built on top of the physical world: the mobile web, the semantic web, virtual worlds, and social networks. I'll quote some of my ideas for connections between them here:
"[...]Now imagine that your mobile device is attuned to a medical device you wear. It can encrypt and send your health info to authorized family members. Imagine that as virtual worlds become more immersive, you can link your cell phone to an in-game cell phone, and answer a call from inside the virtual world. Imagine that your PDA/phone/fax/camera is connected to your social networking profiles, and depending on your status and the status of your network contacts at any given time, automatically determines whether to ring during a meeting because of an emergency, vibrate because you’re receiving a text message during a class, or automatically shunt to voice mail when an unknown number calls you during dinner. Vertical growth not only gives you more ways to receive and broadcast from your mobile device, it helps you determine the context of those communications.
[...]Google Earth already is capable of rendering real-world buildings in 3D. People skilled in image manipulation are taking thousands of photos of a location and combining them to create a full 3D view of it. What happens when we take these creations and make them into a virtual representation within a Second Life-like world(and what are the implications of being able to do the same with photos of people, creating stunningly detailed avatars from those photos)? Will we see a future where you can control your internet-enabled house from within a virtual world, while you’re on vacation perhaps? What if while traveling you come across an amazing location, and you were able to use your phone to send a coordinate ‘bookmark’ to a virtual world likely to have a representation of it?
[...]Think about the possibilities of an internet-enabled car. Now think about the possibilities if every car were internet-enabled. Which auto company could possibly be so stupid as to knowingly put a defective product on the road when anonymous public accident statistics are collected, sorted, and analyzed? How will it change the way our cities are planned when officials can see the routes most often taken by motorists, the businesses at the end of those routes, and how public transportation comparatively meets those needs? Think about your phone’s ability to send a text message to Google Local Search, and receive a list of businesses matching your query. What if it also told you how busy that business was at the moment(restaurant reservations needed?)? What if you were just bored, and your phone could connect to a social networking profile, then a service like Google Maps, and then provide you a list of nearby things you might find interesting?
[...]Movie and music recommendations are a much-ballyhooed use of this context. Let’s up the ante, and make those recommendations and reviews from your friends available over a mobile device while you’re inside Blockbuster, FYE, or BestBuy. Who will be the first to create a service that plugs in to your social networks and semantic web sources, and provides gift recommendations when you’re shopping for people you know? When will social networks offer you the ability to keep track of your location, where and when you’ve met people, what the outcome of those meetings have been, and then be able to recommend where to best spend your Saturday night to meet someone new, or which business event this Wednesday will offer the most valuable connections?[...]"
The rest of the post, which explores what vertical and horizontal growth of these platforms actually means, as well as the challenges faced by them, can be found at: http://socialstrategist.com/2007/07/02/building-the-futures-foundations-platforms-of-the-web
Clearly, Mark Cuban is not only suffering from boredom, but from a lack of imagination as well.
Posted by: Jay Neely | August 27, 2007 7:58 AM
Gosh, I'm rather of the opinion this is going to be an even more exciting period for the web. We are nearing the point where friction in integration/portability/multi-device and true utility is going to force rapid leaps forward. From the islands of Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Google etc. to the sea of webbed data.
It may be less exciting than the user interface and media capabilities of the past years but it will be fundamentally better and more useful.
And there will be plenty of sound bites for our shortened attention spans. e.g. "MySpace integrates with Facebook" etc.
Posted by: Paul M. Watson | August 27, 2007 11:24 AM