Pink Edition
Web Trends 2008 for Web Developers
It is 2008 and time for my annual look into the foggy future of the thing we call "the web"
(read my predictions for 2006 & 2007).
The start of the next revolution
2008 is going to become the year that we will remember as the start of the revolution. Three things in particular will start to happen, which I will explain below, but none of them will be solved. It is the start of the revolution - not the end.
The three things are:
1: Data ownership returns to the people
2008 will be the year when people finally start to fight back on the repeated violations of their data. This will happen both in terms of protecting it, and keeping it safe - but more so in terms of who owns it.
We will no longer accept not be in control of how data about us is being used. We will no longer accept to have our profiles blocked - loosing years of valuable data about ourself and our friends.
2007 was the year when "web people" discussed the problems, but 2008 will be the year when ordinary people start to see the problem as well - and this will be the turning point
Note: Facebook will be the primary catalyst, as they seem to violate people's trust almost every day.
2: The internet advertising model will start to fail
The web is currently run by the means of advertisements, but at the same time it is also starting to fail. The primary reasons are:
Click-through rates are dropping for all types of ads - including video ads and text ads. The effect is that more and more marketing departments will start to realize just how cost inefficient internet marketing really is. At the same time, ordinary people who run advertisements on their sites will see a drop in income.
People are gradually distrusting advertisements in general. We simply have too much choice, and we have been exposed to ads for so long that we "can no longer be fooled by it". An increasing distrust also results in a sharper decrease in click-through rates.
The money goes to the wrong people - and/or there is not enough money in it. Website owners will start to become annoyed by the low amount of money they are earning.
Just to give you an example. I have about twice as many visitors on this site (200,000/month), than there people subscribing to the largest Danish interior design magazine "Bo Bedre" (86,000/month).
To place a single "full page" advertisement in "Bo Bedre" will set you back $14,000/per issue, and there are a lot of those in a magazine like "Bo Bedre" - 111 full sized advertisements just in the latest issue alone (out of 204 pages). This means that "Bo Bedre" have an advertisement income in excess of 1,554,000 per month!!!
With twice as many readers - I only earn about $100 per month. See the problem?
More and more people will start to realize that running ads on their sites - in its current form - is a hopeless effort compared to traditional advertisements. The earnings you make are literally a joke.
2008 will be the year when the current form of advertisements will start to fail - and replacements will begin to take their place (sponsored product placement, viral marketing comes to mind). But, this will happen very slowly.
3: Wasting time will become a problem for many people
2006 and 2007 was undoubtedly the year of social network applications. But, not only that, it was also the years of social clutter, social waste and social shallowness. Most social networks are filled with stuff that provides no real value. We got list of friends that are filled with people who cannot be considered friends and we got add-ons that tell us what kind of vegetable we look like.
Sure it is all fun, and it is something that is going to stay, but 2008 will be the year when people start to demand value, instead of clutter. We will see more social networks applications like Flickr (that can be used by anyone).
Note: This is not a question of being serious or not. It is a question of providing value instead of clutter. A good example is Foamee, the social network application that allows you to "owe coffee or beer" to another person (via Twitter). The act of saying "Hey, you did something for me, so I want to give you a beer" has a lot of value in it.
This was the 3 main points, but it is not all that is going to happen in 2008 - in a shorter form:
- Interoperability becomes standard for success. 2007 was the year when the need for interoperability started to shine - and much to my surprise many companies have already embraced it via API's. In 2008 you need to incorporate interoperability in order to really succeed. Note this will lead to open standards, but not in 2008.
- Rich Media Experiences will be much bigger. Fueled by interactive sporting events (Nascar, the Olympics, NBA, NFL, NHL etc.) - think interactive video. ¨
- Trusted and reliable backup solutions are going to be a big concern for many people. The big fight will be between online solutions and products like Windows Home Server.
- Artificial Intelligence in web automation. We will see a lot more experiments and real products that use highly advanced systems to analyze and work with information.
- TV is going anywhere over the internet. This is already starting, but 2008 will be an amazing year in terms of moving TV and movies online. Note: Prepare for a number of big lawsuits when the middle-men finds that they are going out of business.
- "Local" is going to be challenged. One of the biggest problems at the moment is that many traditional markets still thinks in terms of local vs. global. This will be very bad for business if you continue to do this by the end of 2008.
- There will be a lot of talk about Semantics, but it will have absolutely no impact whatsoever for ordinary people. Note: I actually do not think the next big thing will be semantic web pages. I am sure semantics will come, but only the developers will really know about it.
- China will shake the current way we perceive the internet, fueled by the 2008 Olympics. Many people will suddenly realize just how big the difference between North-American/European and Asian cultures really is (especially on the internet).
- Google will continue to rise, but its fame will be less.
- Apple will come out with a new AppleTV, and it will support full HD, live TV, and Recording.
- Mobile internet will receive a lot of focus, but still not change anything besides what we already see today. But, there will be a lot of experiments with social mobile applications.
- There will again be made attempts to move productivity applications to the net - i.e. Office, but again it will fail to impress ordinary people, and especially enterprises.
- Microsoft and Mozilla will bring out new version of their browsers (Firefox 3 and IE8), the web community will love it - nobody else will notice any difference.
- Amazon's Web-developer initiatives are going to be a big thing.
- Silverlight will not (unfortunately) make much impact in 2008, nor will Adobe Air - maybe in 2009...
- Javascript is going to be painful...
...and to keep it very short:
Big things in 2008:
- Privacy and data control
- Valuable social applications
- Interoperability
- Online TV & Movies
- Amazon
Experiments in 2008
- Mobility
- Social mobile applications (most of them not valuable)
- Backend Web foundations (Amazon among others)
- A.I. web automation
Failures in 2008
- Online productivity applications
- Browsers
- Javascript
- Thinking "local" in geographical terms
Comments
Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 7, 2008
Aku, Thanks for your comment! :)
About the pay-per-view. I do not think its really a question security, as it is to create a viable means of making micropayments (which is impossible today because of huge fees to the credit card companies).
Pål - Jan. 8, 2008
Thomas,
I agree that the online advertizing market is going to change; Google is experimenting all the time and a lot of players are trying to enter the market....
A comment on the Magazine comparison:
ads in magazines are expensive - and they are ad bloated to the point of ridicule. Still, if you want to make compare your earnings to the earnings in offline magazines, you should probably try for a week/month to really make money off your site - although an aggressive monetizing strategy goes against a lot of the aesthetical considerations I bet you have for your blog/website.
Moving your ads to better positions will give you better click throughs and thus better earnings.
Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 8, 2008
Pål, The reason why I compared offline advertising (i.e. in a magazine) with online advertising, was that I wanted illustrate just how big a difference there is between the traditional advertising world and advertising on the internet.
The internet has never really managed to be an effective advertising platform - for the publishers that is. The traffic is extremely high compared to traditional media, but there is very little money involved.
This is why traditional media is struggling to survive (newspapers and magazine). The offline versions is dying, but the internet is currently not capable of replacing it in financial terms.
It is simply impossible to match the income levels of traditional advertising. In my case it would mean my ads had to perform a staggering 3,000,000% better than they do today. Moving the ads to a better position might - if I am lucky - increase my ad income a little, but I will not even get close.
That said, I do agree that magazine ads are "bloated to the point of ridicule" :)
Pål - Jan. 8, 2008
Hehe - a 3 million percent performance improvement may be a bit in the high end :-)
But monetizing online content is hard; people generally think that content on the web should be free - preferably without the ads too...
For the big websites I think advertising could be reasonably profitable if they started to manage their online advertising themselves - just like conventional media does to a certain extent. But displaying general ads (as in conventional magazines) in online media is never going to work - and therefore contextual advertising is definately going to be even more pervasive (and intrusive) in the future. And also as the media networks expand, users will be tracked across websites and offered ads that relate to their surfing history - and the contextual advertising moves in a whol e new direction.
Jonathan - Jan. 8, 2008
The fact that you didn't add the traditional Microsoft prediction (other than in the context of browsers) shows what a strange company they have become. I would say that 2008 will be the year Microsoft continue to ape everything everyone else does, but without any of the flare. If I worked for Microsoft, I'd be getting seriously depressed at their total an utter lack of any capacity to innovate in any market at all. When Unbuntu is more fun to use than Vista, that has to tell you something.
Tine Randen - Apr. 28, 2008
Any thoughts on the integration of VR and games dev technology in terms of user experiences and movement in dig.med?
Thomas Baekdal - Apr. 28, 2008
Tine, that is indeed a very interesting subject. There is a lot of very interesting things in that area - much of which can and will impact on digital medias in general.
Most noticably is user generated experience (not content - but experiences). The mixture of 2D and 3D in a multidimensional kind of 2½D (hard to explain with words) and mixing virtual gaming enviroments with the physical world.
And the emerging concept of mixing single player and multiplayer into a what-ever-you-feel-this-second player. Giving people the choice to control the level of social interaction in incredible detail. Which you can mix with online shopping experiences (shop with friends online, interact with them, with other people and with the people running the store - all via a website, or more important via your mobile device (iPhone or similar). Not so much in terms of chatting, but instead being a part of the experience.
neil - May. 4, 2008
Great ideas for this year...
What I love most is the browser notation...the web community will really love the transition but that's just about it...the mass public (common web surfers) won't even bother what the difference will be...
As for monetizing...though it's vital for small websites, you really did hit a the mark...Most sites now have ads (google ads and others-pay/view or pay/click)..but now constant surfers could see the difference between ads and content links....(And as what happen on TV market, we start hating ads as they kill the show..)..
maybe someone will come up with a more productive ad technique...
Haiming - SEO Services - May. 22, 2008
Hi Thomas,
I really enjoy reading your blog post. If your blog has 20k visitors a month, and you only make $100 from AD, there must be something wrong with your marketing stragegy. How much will it cost to put a text link ad on your front page? I am thinking to buy some text link from some good blog.
Thomas Baekdal - May. 22, 2008
Hi Haiming,
Thanks!
I agree - although I think the problem is with Googe AdSense.
I am launching my own advertising system later this summer (probably in August). Selling ad space for $0.01 per impression.
BTW: I actually got 250.000 visitors per month... :)
Haiming - SEO Services - May. 23, 2008
Hi Thoms,
Can I put a text link in your front page? How much will it cost per month?
Thomas Baekdal - May. 26, 2008
all ad spaces will cost $0.01 per impression, but I am not accepting ads until I got a system in place to handle and automate the administration.
Please stay tuned...
Alfie Goodrich - Jun. 30, 2008
TV and HD on the web? Great where you have decent infrastructure and bandwidth, like where I live now - Japan. But, back in my old country - the UK? People would like tv to be big on the web in 2008 but it won't be until the delivery method is in line with the aspirations. Broadband speeds in the UK still average out at less than 10mb and are more realistically around 4mb. Here in Japan the average is 60mb, across the whole country. I get 100mb as standard here in Tokyo.
Google AdSense needs to go.
In general I am amazed that people even bother with a lot of web advertising. Of all the people I know who use the web, I cant think of one who actually ever clicks on an online advert.
This is a great article and many of the things you mention will prove to be spot-on or, at the least, very near the mark.
Published: Jan. 7, 2008 in Management
Thomas Baekdal is a Writer, Interaction Designer, Change Advocate and Project Manager.
Aku - Jan. 7, 2008
Looks very plausible.
About the money part:
Someone will surely think of a way to revolutionize the money flow though the internet as well. Advertisements won't do, as it's already far too easy to block all incoming advertisements. Some browsers even do it without you having to move a finger!
I think that the web publishers will be able to earn some extra cash by for example such thing as pay-per-view as credit card transactions become more secure.
Talking about security: That will most likely shoot up in 2008. Virus scanners now outsource pretty much any virus, spyware is going down with efficient memory scans going up and untrustworthy websites will be easier to report so everyone can be aware of them.
Thanks for the great post, it's opened my eyes to all the things a new year may bring for us. All the good to YOUR own new year!