03 August 2007

Web Mee

I am sick of reading everywhere about this bubble. I haven't written a post here for months, been too busy with Fuelmyblog and other things.

I am writing this as someone that isn’t a guru, geek, evangelist, journalist or expert. I am a user.

I first used email in 1998. Up until that point, I had worked in face-to-face sales roles and nobody had the internet at home, in fact none of my friends even had a PC. I bought my first PC in 1997, when I installed my dial-up modem, my friends and family thought I had money to burn and was crazy.

In 2000, I downloaded “Unfinished Symphony” it took an hour. A 3Mb MP3. I wasn’t on a low wage, I had rented a farm at his time and earned a 6 figure wage, speed just wasn’t available.

Fast forward to today. My little cousin is 20 years old. She has been using Facebook for years, has loads of friends on it and just about every application available. When I asked her “have you heard of Facebook” she was stunned, “yes but why are you asking?” ,of course, she doesn’t read Techcrunch and all the others, in fact she hasn’t even heard of web 2.0. Why should she, she uses things that entertain her and her mates, she has known no difference, she has used the web since the age of 11. It is like me asking my friends “do you read a newspaper”..”yes, why?”.

My kids are 10 and 8 years old. They are what the web is being developed for, not people over 30. We just jump onto the next cool thing to keep looking cool, they jump on new things because they want it. “Daddy I want to watch SpongeBob..NOW!” then they click onto YouTube and there it is, they have no patience, they know no difference. My kids now look at things online at their Grandparents “look Nan, this is the song I like”. My Grandparents have an emergency mobile phone but to this day have absolutely no idea what it is. Things change.

I am 34 years old I have been using the web since I was 24. I remember growing up without mobile phones and when I signed up for my first mobile phone everyone laughed at me, I was 21, I needed it because I was a private investigator in London.

We are not the future and shouldn’t keep trying to guess what’ll be big next, they’ll be no bubble bursting, I wrote earlier that the only people that write about the bubble bursting are those journalists trying to justify their jobs. Wake up, things changed, no-one reads stuff written by old people anymore, not on the web anyway.

When I think bubble, I think of the 15 year olds blowing them at us with gum. The web is moving towards Web Mee not web 3.0. Web Mee is about what I want the web to do for me, not web 2.0 and what it did for you.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent post!!

Anonymous said...

I rarely post on blogs I stumble upon, but this post was so misguided I had to respond. The 30 year olds you claim are just band-wagon jumpers are in fact the people who drive the web. They are the ones with the means and money to ensure future development in both infrastructure and software. Your small children are of no concern to developers because they don't have any money to spend on the web. They are not revenue generators. Your kids simply enjoy the fringe benefits of companies like Facebook.com, MySpace, etc... whom offer a free service. However under the surface the developers, managers and owners of these companies are hoping to leverage these projects into some kind of revenue. This revenue may come through advertising, deals with other companies or other services. However at the end of the day, the hope of all involved is that at some point in the chain a 30+ year old with some money to spend will part with it to drive the internet forward.

KevinD said...

To Mr/Mrs Anonymous, your fear of saying who you are says it all. My guess is that you are over 30 and are probably a journalist..

My post was referring to the constant bullshit written in the press by old people saying that the web is going to crash.

Your comment is totally wrong, if the developers purely aimed at getting the 30+ year olds to click on an advert or two the web would crash, totally. It is web 2.0 my friend, it is being developed in the main by 20 somethings that simply don't give too much of a crap about revenue, they create services that they want to use, like Facebook, if they had aimed it at 30+, it wouldn't have worked it was aimed at kids at school.

In anycase, I actually own one of these sites, I employ those developers, have raised VC and am getting revenue, my average user is in their 30's.

My kids don't use facebook or myspace. Read the post, they are 8 and 10.

You are nothing more than a troll, someone over 30 that is too scared to leave comments and show your face.

Show your face and lets chat. Oh, you can't, too spineless, just like all the trolls out there.

steven edward streight said...

I would just delete any webless troll comments. I feel TechCrunch is wrong to let webless trolls post their mammonist, greedy Enronish, fake VC comments...and not be accountable.

Web 1.0 was web "presences" that lurked like a lollipop, waiting for eyes to lick it, no wait, like flypaper trying to be "sticky".

Web 1.0 was web sites you just stared at. Or bought shit from.

Next Web, Future Web, Web 32.0 is web sites we co-create, contribute content to, interact with on many levels, and use to promote our own purposes.

While the teenyboppers have more disposable income, the seniors are flocking to the web also.

Club Penguin socnet for 4-8 year olds. Dogster socnet for canines.

The web is becoming more a suite of tools than a museum of web "presences".

Never before in human history have the youth taught their elders about emerging technology.

Never before has the individual had a level playing field of multi media communications, including live streaming video.

Lifecasting is the New Blogging.

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