Fin d'année, l'heure des bilans et perspectives, comme indiqué ci-dessous. Vu que ce monde bouge à la vitesse de l'éclair, plutôt salutaire de se poser quelques minutes pour faire le point !
Ce blog (ReadWriteWeb) propose aux bloggers de contribuer à compléter cette analyse; voici le lien pour en prendre connaissance en même temps que les plus petites tendances
It's December already and so it's about that time to reflect on what has happened in Web Technology during 2006 - and ponder what 2007 may bring. Over the next few weeks Read/WriteWeb is going to publish some in-depth posts analyzing the trends and new products we've seen in 2006, as well as musing on some specific things we'll probably see in 2007.
To kick this series off, here is an overview of some high level trends from 2006.
2006 Review
- Undoubtedly 2006 has been the year of the social network. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook have been the three outstanding success stories - but also impressive was Bebo (in the UK particularly) and there was strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks like Flickr and del.icio.us. The zenith of this social networking craze was probably Google buying YouTube for $1.65 B.
- RSS continues to inch towards the mainstream - Yahoo integrated it into Y! Mail Beta, Microsoft is utilizing it more (e.g. integrated into IE7), Google came out with Google Base and the GData format (which is based on the RSS variant, ATOM). While 2006 can't be seen as the breakthrough year for RSS in the mainstream, we will probably see RSS bloom in 2007 as a result of the groundwork done in '06 by the big Internet companies. Note that there have been recent murmurs that Yahoo is scaling back RSS, but I think this is a short-term trend only.
- 2006 was also the year that Web 2.0 got overhyped and the term is now generally accepted as just a marketing term, akin to Dot Com. But whatever you call it - I prefer to use the term 'Social Web' or even 'read/write Web' nowadays - this current era of the Web is making a big impact. Mainstream media is taking on board many read/write philosophies. This is evidenced in many ways - e.g. News Corp acquiring MySpace and seeing enormous growth; blogs are now accepted by mainstream media and businesses; etc. Also the overwhelming presence of media people at the 2006 Web 2.0 Summit was evidence that Social Web trends are influencing a broader cross-spectrum of people now.
- In 2006 Amazon came out with some startling new web technologies - Mechanical Turk, S3 (online storage) and EC2. Their push to be a major web services infrastructure platform was one of the more intriguing strategies from an Internet bigco this year.
- On the other big companies... Google dominated the news and buzz this year, Microsoft pushed ahead with its Windows Live strategy (its Web-based suite of products and services), and Yahoo had a steady product year (but ending with organizational issues). Apple continued to dominate the online music market (forcing Microsoft to compete head-on) and has also entered the video space with gusto.
- Lots of bigco partnering. Allow me to quote directly from Mark Evans here, as he captured this trend very nicely: "Ebay and Yahoo have snuggled up together, announcing in May that Yahoo would serve display ads to Ebay’s US users and promote Paypal – Ebay’s payment service – to Yahoo users. In August, Ebay signed Google to serve ads to international Ebay users. A dollar each way, perhaps?"
- 2006 also saw the return of the VC money (see web 2.0 hype above!). Although VC money this time round seems to be much more circumspect and generally lower valuations than in the dot com boom. Indeed an associated trend is that web startups are increasingly going it alone and bootstrapping, thanks to open source technologies (e.g. the LAMP platform) and ability to work anywhere anytime. On the flip side (pardon the pun), it still pays to be located in Silicon Valley - as that is where the key networking and fundraising activity still takes place.
- Localization really matters in Web space - for example TradeMe dominates New Zealand traffic and similar local products often outrank the likes of Yahoo and Google in their local markets. The larger trend here is that cultural and language differences mean that big US companies don't always dominate in international markets. Having said that, there is also a lot of overseas cloning of successful Silicon Valley apps (e.g. digg, flickr). See Read/WriteWeb's continuing coverage of international markets for individual country drill-downs.
- The consumerization of the enterprise has been an emerging trend all year. More and more social web apps are coming into the enterprise (e.g. Skype, IM), and organizations are adopting read/write Web philosophies. Corporate blogging got popular in 2006 and blogs are usually part of the mix now in marketing plans.
- In particular, I've been tracking the trend of Web Office. As well as lots of startup action (Zoho, Zimbra, ThinkFree, et al), late this year saw a flurry of action from Google in this space - Google Apps For Your Domain, the acquisitions of Writely and JotSpot, the launch of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and more. In 2007 a major area of focus will be the increasing competition in office software between Google and Microsoft.
- Widgets (mini web apps) were all the rage this year, culminating in its own conference. Related to this, 'personalized start pages' (live.com, netvibes, pageflakes, etc) ramped up, enabling users to collect their widgets together on the one site.
- Online video was hot, hot, hot this year! There are currently a host of YouTube wannabes on the market. The best chance for success for all these startups vying for attention, is to either come out with a next-generation product that takes online video functionality to the next level and/or target a specific niche market.
- VoIP space showed signs of hotting up. Skype now has a bunch of new competitors, all aiming to disrupt the existing telecoms industry.
- Hybrid web/desktop apps (or as Read/WriteWeb termed it "webified desktop apps") came into play a lot more this year. For example the Times Reader, built using Microsoft WPF technology. Also noteworthy is Adobe's Apollo platform and Laszlo's rich internet apps platform.
- Browser Wars 2.0. Firefox enjoyed strong growth this year and released its 2.0 browser in October. 2006 was also (not coincidentally) the year that Microsoft finally upgraded its Internet Explorer browser, to 7.0.
- From a blog perspective, Techcrunch established itself as the blog at the center of all the web 2.0 action - attracting aspiring startups like moths around a flame. Other tech blogs like Gigaom, VentureBeat and Read/WriteWeb itself, have also experienced excellent growth this year.
- Ajax had strong growth this year and according to some reports is not that far behind Flash now.
- World Internet Penetration is 16% and growing - Asia in particular is ramping up fast! Also noteworthy is that 3/4 of traffic to top websites is international.
(ReadWriteWeb.com)
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