Calling All Gurus - You Don't Know What The Future Holds

None of us know what the future holds. Speculation about the way the internet is going to develop, how people will behave online or where they will get their information from, is little more than guesswork.

Let me give some examples:

Software

As a middle aged man who started using the internet a long time ago (mainly to play Ultima Online rather than do anything useful), I remember when an amazing new piece of software appeared. ICQ was the first popular instant messaging service to run on Windows.

All of a sudden, e-mail seemed slow and cumbersome. Everybody had to have ICQ.

Where is it now? My ICQ buddy list has dwindled over the years, while my Windows Live list has grown.

I'm sure people still use ICQ. According to Digital Trends, it has an estimated 15 million active users.

According to Microsoft, Windows Live is used by 330 million people a month (I'd guess many hundreds of millions more have it installed and never use it).

I don't know where Digital Trends gets its figures from, but I doubt anyone who uses instant messaging much is going to disagree that ICQ has been overshadowed.

So, will this happen to Twitter? I doubt it, but I don't know. Neither do you. Let's see what happens when Twitter is sold to AOL while Microsoft and Google launch their joint-venture micro-blogging service.

Hardware

The first big wave of internet hype, about ten years ago, didn't come to much (although some of the predictions are beginning to come true today).

Rather than sit at home in front of computer screens, people embraced technology nobody had really predicted - mobile phones and texting.

But have we now entered an age when the PC becomes as commonplace as the television?

Maybe. But maybe Microsoft's dream of flogging us all integrated home entertainment systems which let you play Counterstrike, watch high definition DVDs, browse Facebook and listen to music - all from a box far cheaper and less complicated than a PC - will come true instead.

As consoles like the Xbox and Wii shift from gaming machines to all-round entertainment and social media systems, people may not feel they need to shell out on a PC after all.

The significance of this is that consoles are designed to be idiot-proof. They are harder to mess up, for example by downloading Trojans or accidentally wiping your hard disc.

So they are far less amenable to small start-ups or amateur coders producing new apps. The days when bloggers are raving each week about Floogle, MyBo or some other bizarre new service may be limited. Or maybe not.

Manners

Somebody once invented a horrible word - netiquette. You laughed at anyone who used this word, but generally followed its conventions

They included a prohibition on cross-posting - posting the same content to lots of different places - and a dislike of shilling, or self-promotion. (Shilling doesn't necessarily involve making money, as actually making money on the internet was pretty much unthinkable anyway).

It's an understatement to say that's all gone out the window. Today, people boast of their technical prowess in using ping.fm to post the same content to a dozen different places.

Twitter abounds with people hyping up their blog (I'm going to do it once I post this) or slyly informing us how amazed they are that they were included in a list of the most influential bloggers with a B13 postcode.

And maybe that's better. Perhaps it's just sensible to make your content available to as many people as possible.

But if you're going to boast that you "get it" and understand the rules of the game, it can't hurt to consider that they will be different tomorrow. Maybe.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (4)

...
written by Nick Booth, August 10, 2009

I found this in a good old fashioned feed reader. I don't want to force into saying things aint the way they used to be, but do you have web etiquette which you think should be sacrosanct?

I've found myself being irritated by people who give credit in a blog post by linking to someone's twitter page, when the thing they are crediting didn't happen on twitter. I reckon if someone has a blog you should acknowledge them by linking to that blog.

Of course the point of this is that not only will things change, but we all see the web differently, so in truth it is in permanent flux through time and across networks.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

...
written by Jon Bounds, August 10, 2009

>They included a prohibition on cross-posting - posting the same content to lots of different places - and a dislike of shilling, or self-promotion. (Shilling doesn't necessarily involve making money, as actually making money on the internet was pretty much unthinkable anyway).

That sounds about right - cross posting is still pretty valueless, and while people dont' tend to call the self promotion as much, people will still see it and inwardly seethe.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

...
written by Jonathan Walker, August 10, 2009

Hi Jon

And Hi Nick. Thanks for commenting.

Nick, I think "things ain't what they used to be" may be a fair summation of my post

I hope I didn't give the impression I was having a go at people for not behaving the way I think they should on the web. I was just saying that attitudes have changed.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

...
written by Benjamin Ellis, August 10, 2009

The way people behave has changed because the web has. I'm just finishing off a post based on OFCOMs latest data. The length of time people spend on-line each day is at its highest level ever.

Factoring in the grown of appliance-based access - the growing trend of Internet in everything, from PDAs and Phones to games consoles and home entertainment systems (as you point out) - computer-mediated communication is almost becoming more usual than face to face interaction. That may be good, or it may be bad, but either way, it is changing the on-lines rules. It has to.

Everyone is becoming a digital-media content producer. That means increasing pressure to produce, and impossible amounts to consume. Something has to give.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Name

Website

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Add Comment

Internet