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Professional
Search Marketing 101
Crowd constitution at SEO conferences, such as Chicago’s Search Engine Strategies
is rather varied. While one can certainly rub shoulders with veterans, for obvious
reasons, newcomers are present in force.
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Pioneering
The Participatory Web
"Floundering" might be a word used to describe
traditional PR folks attempting to navigate the obstacles of not only the participatory
web but even the Internet in general.
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Capitalize
on Social Media
Everyone’s clamoring to become a part of the social media scene… to be heard and
understood as well as to understand...
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Jaw
Dropping Search Data
Our natural inclination when presented with terms such as "keywords," "trend research"
and "data mining," is to associate them with SEO...
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Breaking
Down Pay-Per-Click
The common perception when it comes to search marketing is to view pay-per-click
and organic strategies...
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Unraveling
the Mystery of Video Search
Online video is a rapidly growing and evolving medium in the Web 2.0 landscape,
to be sure. Many websites are embracing the platform, building their entire structure
around the practice.
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The
Benefits of SEO in Online Retail
Online retail is not a venture for the faint of heart, to be sure. Finding success
in the realm of eCommerce requires patience, diligence, and a willingness to be
flexible...
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Thursday, January 4, 2007 |
Around the time the World Wide Web was being opened to users of AOL for the first
time, and 9600 baud was a massive upgrade in speed for modems, some clever people
made predictions about the future that held up pretty well over the years.
Editor's Note:
Back in the halcyon days of the World Wide Web, the first full year of
the web browser prompted people to consider the future of the Internet. Where
do you see the web heading by 2020? Let us know at WebProWorld.
Someone excavated a piece of Internet lore and posted
it to Slashdot. It's an article that appeared in the long-defunct Internet World
magazine, published by Alan Meckler's Mecklermedia and republished
online at Krypton Neon.
Eric Berlin penned the piece that gathered thoughts on the best and worst of the
Internet for 1994, and predictions for its future. The late Susan Calcari deserves
a moment of warm remembrance for placing Nethack
at the top of her Best of Entertainment list. It's a game I've installed on every
machine I've ever used as a workstation for years.
Her most telling "Worst Of" selection should seem rather surprising today: "The
organization of the World-Wide Web. I love the Web, but finding something
specific on it is a nightmare. And because the Web is growing by leaps and bounds,
I just don't see things getting easier anytime soon."
Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame turned 21 that year, two years before
their research project on search
began.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's first staff counsel, Mike Godwin, lamented
the appearance of "less-than-desirable material" showing up on the Net. In 1996,
he was one of the lawyers taking on the Communications Decency Act; the Supreme
Court found in favor of Godwin's side on First Amendment grounds.
For people concerned with freedom of speech issues and the Bush Administration,
Krypton Neon owner Kenny Greenberg's list of the worst things of 1994 (the Digital
Telephony bill, the Clipper Chip FIPS, obscenity prosecutions of bulletin board
systems, and media hysteria about e-mail stalking and the threat to children on
the Internet) probably reads like a modern headline.
His prediction
for the future? "There will be a concerted effort by the U.S. Congress
to regulate content on the Internet."
•••
Thirteen years have passed since these and other predictions hit the newsstands
in Internet World. Spam isn't just Canter
and Siegel any more; it's a multi-national plague run by hundreds of criminals
running thousands of scams and fueled by clueless people buying their illicit
wares.
Instant messaging and VoIP have begun to supplant email for regular communications
anyway, a change we will lament. The best part of email is its asynchronous nature.
A message sent at 9 could be answered at 10 without either party feeling intruded
upon or ignored.
The business world has come to expect continuous, always-on, location-irrelevant
connectivity. That made the Blackberry an addictive device, one that wiped out
the effectiveness of managing and prioritizing email by making every incoming
message a priority.
As far as predictions go, communication looks like the aspect of the Internet
that has reached a zenith. The last step involves portable communications, where
people can be reached wherever and whenever, and the modern cellphone as data
device has just about reached that point.
This leaves the process of getting data to people, and that forms one prediction
for us: we see a point where by 2020, Internet communications will be a utility.
Companies that want to be more than just pipes will find the needs of the populace
outweigh the needs of the telcos and cablecos.
Say bye-bye to chokepoints.
Those companies will have to adapt to a world where wireless high-speed connections
render the wired obsolete for consumers and businesses. The firms that transition
best to supporting such an infrastructure and feeding
it content, the distribution of which they can control within limits
(cable only channels like ESPN, or satellite-only options like the NFL Ticket
from DirecTV) , will endure.
Although it might be easy to predict the death of the conventional search engine,
especially with concept-based approaches being developed (think IBM and UIMA),
the Googles and Asks of the world offer enough to people through a single search
box that they have become a de facto approach to web navigation.
Unless it's easier, faster, and more accurate, search as we know it now probably
has less chance of changing dramatically by 2020 than we have of seeing Toyota
come out with flying cars. The television as a device has changed from black and
white to color, and from knobs to remote control, without getting away from its
essential functionality because it can't get any simpler.
And neither can search.
Video could be Google's undoing for a time, should they prove unable to negotiate
their way out of the infringement lawsuits brought on by their YouTube purchase.
That could mean the paring of a number of their numerous services and a retooling
back to a tighter focus on search relevance and advertising.
Other predictions coming from inside the WebProNews house think a lot of online
video, but little of poorly-produced online video. The
shakeup is coming, and while there will be a place for videos on
the Internet, the best content will succeed.
We plan to keep shifting to video, to the point where mainstreaming events and
news online becomes the WebProNews norm. We expect other outlets to do the same,
so plan on keeping those video cards upgraded.
It will be hard for bloggers and websites to be taken seriously without good video.
Gadget goodness like Nokia's just-debuted N95
will look quaint after a company debuts Oakley-style glasses with a built-in camera
and microphone, and wireless connectivity to post content in real time.
The falling circulation for print media could mean the demise of long-lived publications
like the Wall Street Journal in their current forms. Even shrinking the size of
the paper as the Journal plans to do won't overcome the cost savings they can
enjoy by making the inevitable
shift to online-only.
Predictions and a couple of bucks will get you a nice hot chocolate at Starbucks.
But the advances made in wireless technology and technology miniaturization, coupled
with the spiraling costs of newsprint, could make our forward-looking statements
look downright prescient in fourteen years.
About
the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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