internet on the telly

I’ve been harping on for some time (to anyone who’ll listen) about how our tv and internet experiences are going to merge and YouTube XL looks like a sign off things to come.

YouTube as we know it but formated for widescreen and remote control.

Future of the web

A recent article in Time magazine talks about the future of the web and whether the next paradigm shift in the way we use it will be brought to us by Google, Facebook or even Apple. Whilst it is likely that this change will occur and quickly, I’d be surprised if the name or brand that we will associate it with is one that we know already.  

One idea that has been kicking around for some time and could see a shift in the way we use the web was addressed at seminar I attended a while back on the Semantic web. The seminar was dull and too geeky (even by my standards) but it did have an interesting overarching thought – that the next phase of the web will be characterised by utilizing a rich layer of metadata that sits on top of the web. Whilst metadata has always existed to a certain extent the change will be in how this develops and fundamentally changes how we navigate and access information.

A recent article in the Economist touched on this by hinting that the future of the web could be based less  on search and result but more on discovery through all content containing links to other relevant content. There are quite a few examples that have been around for a while such as SnapShots, Hyperwords, Cooliris, PicLens and to a degree Vibrant Media. But beyond being nice browser ad-ons or interesting advertising platforms, we haven’t yet seen any signs of a fundamental shift in user behaviour based on the Semantic web.

Now I’ve got no idea what the next big shift will be or who it will come from, but…. how about a combination of the Semanitc web combined with Google’s mapping of the web, personalisation based on browsing and other preferences and what we now know about the recent developments of the social web.

Through combining the rich layer of web metadata with our own personal portable preference data all content could itself form links to other relevant content, that is pre-sorted, ranked and previewed for us.

This could mark a shift in how we find and sort information and fundamentally how we use the web – perhaps back to a portal entry point to the web, where all content opens up new options based on its relevance to me and allows me to consume as much of it as supplementary content as I want or in itself links to and draws in further related content from elsewhere, all before I ever have to ‘click thru’ to anywhere.

Or maybe not.

As Anthony Mayfield talks about at Social Media Influence 08 on ‘Social Media and Innovation’ we should be less worried about what the next big thing will be but more focused on the fact that it is always going to evolve. The web will continue to change and therefore how we, as brands, need to adapt how we approach innovating our businesses to address the shifting landscape and rules.