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Monday
Jul122010
It's the End of the Web as We Know It
Young Urban Professional
Wither the web? It's hard to believe but soon, if not already, the web is going to become a lot less interesting to consumers -- and just as it approaches its 20th birthday.
According to Morgan Stanley, within five years global internet consumption on mobile devices will surpass the same activity on PCs. This sounds like good news. It's natural to think that browsers on the third screen (phones) and the fourth screen (tablets) will simply replace time spent in front of the same on a PC. That's not the case.
Mobile devices, by their nature, force users to become more mission-oriented. As more internet consumption shifts to gadgets, it's increasingly becoming an app world and we just live in it. Innovation, fun, simplicity and single-purpose utility will rule while grandiose design and complexity will fall by the wayside.
It won't be enough just to build branded mobile applications that repurpose content across all of the different platforms. That's like newspapers taking the print experience and replicating it on the web as they tried back in the 1990s. Rather, we will need to rethink, remix and repackage information for an entirely different modality than platforms of yore.
First, let's look at the trends.
1) The canvas. The iPad has been deemed by some a blank slate. When you use any mobile device, you're really only able to do one thing at a time. This means that we become entirely engrossed in whatever we have on the screen. Companies will need to up the ante if they hope to keep users in their fold longer. Development costs will go up, and the economics of content and experiences will look more like Hollywood -- where a few hits deliver enough profit to pay for the dogs -- than Madison Avenue.
2) Content snacking. How often do you consume media meals -- e.g. engage with a unit of media like a newspaper, magazine or film from start to finish in one sitting? My guess is that you do this less than you did 10 years ago. Content snacking rules today. Popular digital metrics, such as time spent, may soon be useless.
3) Infinite choice. It never ceases to amaze me what a single mobile device can hold. Every time I turn on my phone, my finger needs to decide what's more important to me at that time -- friends, work, entertainment, etc. Choice will scale, human attention is finite, and mobile devices put all of this in our pockets. Time is your competition.
To succeed, here are three new behaviors we need to consider:
1) Adoption. Marketing and media has long been about invention. We like to control our own destiny by bringing to bear the best content and experiences we can muster. However, in an app world it's easier to seek out those who have been successful and partner or acquire them. That's the road chosen by Disney with its purchase of Tapulous, and eBay (an Edelman client) with its acquisition of Red Laser.
2) Collaboration. In the mobile world, there's strength in numbers. To fight shrinking attention spans, companies will need to increasingly create partnerships to cut through the noise. Look for applications to pop up that are co-branded and curate content in high-interest verticals.
3) Context. When it comes to mobile, one size doesn't always fit all. Content producers will need to rethink how they package up information and chunk it down. ESPN, for example, is rolling out mobile applications that cater to local markets, in addition to wider offerings that are all things to all people.
Marketers and media companies must adapt to this new construct -- and fast -- or they will get left behind.
Photo credit: #53/365 BlackBerry Apps by Tatsuhiko+ (RIM is an Edelman client)
Reader Comments (19)
Steve,IF it's the end of the web, then what will we be connecting across with all these apps? At & T? Private Mobile Providers Networks? think Net Neutrality.. What if don't have an iPhone like you? (i like T-Mobile and my Google Phone). Is At & T going to allow me to get free access to read your blog on my mobile phone.. wait.. where will your blog be hosted? (since the Web has ended?)How and where will we all connect.. Facebook? (hint: it's a website)Twitter? (we connect over the internet.. )so how does the web die? I love the observations and the strategy you speak of above.. but the headlines.... =)
Great post. But on point #2, you say, "Popular digital metrics, such as time spent, may soon be useless." I think part of the future for online communications/digital PR is helping clients understand how to interpret digital metrics in a useful way. Rather than numbers going up or down, I'd like to see more traffic quality analysis by source, more conversion analysis, etc. I'd like to see the analytics departments in PR firms get beefed up...
Magazines and Newspapers aren't single units. Focus and snacking can't both be trends, can they? What we're seeing is that as the mobile devices gain higher resolution screens and better audio, they can become primary media devices, but ones that work in parallel with other activities; that let us listen to podcasts while driving, watch movies and read books while on buses, trains and planes, and yes, read magazine-length articles in the coffee line.The App model and the web model are becoming closer together, with the HTML5 web being focused on rich app development, and it being delivered on mobile devices first.For now the input models drive us to shorter form there, but that will change too as the devices gain richer capture tools and better text entry.
The internet has changed from the days of black and white (green and white?) text only (graphics were composed of cleverly arranged text) and only a small portion of us had access to it. It has rapidly morphed into what is now the web with naysayers all along the way predicting its death - a death similar to the dot.com bust. This is but one more step along the way changing the way we use the web. With more and more users daily (and a greater number of international users thrown into the mix), it is bound to change radically over and over. As many fourteen year olds would say, "it's become so 15 minutes ago."
Indeed, context is content.I also value the notions of collaboration rather than control and adoption rather than invention wherever possible.
As long as mobile Internet is way too expensive in Europe, none of this is likely to happen in Europe - except for a minority of users who have the money or want to spend the money.SMS (texting) still rules in Europe.
I'm not sure why what you describe isn't still "the Web."
I don't see this as a bad thing, and I don't think it will kill browsing outright-- rather, it will focus search better and reduce *unnecessary* browsing.
I agree with some of the commenters, I don't think this development is a bad thing, it's simply another 'generation' or iteration of the web as we think of it. Actually, being able to access the internet and use it through specialised apps for focused interaction is probably a great thing, removing it from the bounds of the browser alone.
It's not only the end of the web as we know it, what we're facing. It's also the end of marketing and advertising as we know it - hopefully...
A typical look at does reflects your wealth, status and ability..
A typical look at does reflects your wealth, status and ability..
Interesting, and I want to read more of your stuff. But this comment is just to ask you to correct the spelling of the first word in this post - it's "whither" - "wither" has a very different meaning! Thanks.
Actually no - in this case it's wither, as in shriveling.
Oh, OK - I'll buy it, but it just a tad ambiguous, don't you think?
Oops - that should be "it's" but now I'm being really pedantic!!! I'll stop, I promise!
Sure, that's fair.
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