2007 Web Predictions

Après le post du 12 décembre dernier sur le bilan des "Web technology trends of 2006", la même équipe donne ses prévisions sur ce que seront les highlights de 2007

Ca fourmille de repères, mais je vous épargne l'interminable ascenseur via le lien ci-joint...

(ReadWrite/Web)

Person of the Year: You

Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.
The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

And we are so ready for it. We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.

And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.

But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious

(From the Dec. 25, 2006 issue of TIME magazine)

2006 Web Technology Trends

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)

Vidéos en ligne : Deal Yahoo-Reuters

Yahoo ! et Reuters lancent le service You Witness
Le moteur de recherche américain Yahoo ! vient de lancer, en partenariat avec l'agence Reuters, le service You Witness, système de contributions de nouvelles par la photo et la vidéos envoyés par des internautes (http://news.yahoo.com/you-witness). Reuters aura la possibilité de publier les photos et vidéos de son choix. Yahoo ! publiera sa sélection d'images dans le cadre de sujets mis en avant sur son fil d'actualités Yahoo ! News. Le service est destiné pour commencer aux images d'actualité générale, mais pourrait être décliné au sport ou au divertissement. Yahoo ! et Reuters élaborent un plan de compensation pour les contributeurs de contenu, lorsque leurs images et vidéos seront sélectionnées en vue d'une souscription.

(Satellifax)

Service Après Vol, Bonjour

Pour combattre les compagnies low cost qui se sont multipliées ces dernières années, British Airways a choisi d'adopter la méthode agressive.

Grâce à la participation d'Omar et Fred parodiant leur programme Service Après Vente (Canal+), la compagnie britannique dénonce désormais les failles de ses concurrents à bas prix.
Une amusante campagne, prévue de novembre à janvier, conduit vers un site dédié sur lesquels on retrouve une 20aine de sketchs de deux comparses.
L'internaute peut également participer en racontant ses pires mésaventures sur les compagnies low cost...
Et s'il devient "le pigeon voyageur de la semaine", il pourra même peut-être remporter un week-end pour 2 à Londres...

Le Club du Net AOL, 1ère

Je vous devais bien ça pour en avoir parlé cette semaine 1ère interview de Fabius par Karl Zéro hier

Karl Zero, le retour !

C'est sur AOL que Karl Zero fait son grand retour dès le 26 octobre : il animera chaque semaine le club du net où comme à son habitude il mettra sur le grill ses invités politiques avec sa marque de fabrique: le tutoiement.
On va s'amuser !

Envie d'une 2è vie ... ?!

Et si la fiction rejoignait la réalité ?!
Allez aussi faire un tour sur l'un des mondes virtuels les plus connus, World of Warcraft, ou encore sur Hotel Habbo : les annonceurs commencent à investir ces territoires "fictifs" qui draînent plusieurs millions d' "acteurs" et donc une audience...

Le service de réalité virtuelle SecondLife reçoit les faveurs de la presse dernièrement. Après avoir levé 11 millions de dollars en début d’année (soit un total de 19 millions) ils ont fêté leur 3e anniversaire et ont annoncé récemment leur millionième membre inscrit. Si l’on met de côté le fait que leur base de données à été récemment piratée, on peu dire que SecondLife connaît un succès énorme.

Une économie virtuelle “réelle” et solide soutient le modèle de la société. Au moins 3000 membres gagnent 20 000 dollars par an en vendant des habits ou des biens immobiliers. On estime les revenus générés par SecondLife à 64 millions de dollars par an. Les marques ont saisi l’opportunité et commencent à investir dans cet univers comme la marque Wells fargo qui a créé sa propre ile ou Reuters qui dispose de son journaliste virtuel.

SecondLife affiche ces statistiques sur leur page d’accueil. Près d’un demi million d’utilisateurs ont utilisé le service dans les 60 derniers jours et 441 948 dollars ont été dépensés dans les dernières 24 heures.

On peut s’attendre avec ces chiffres à voir des nouveaux business fleurir sur SecondLife. Et d’autres sociétés viendront vendre leur prestation de conseil sur le sujet. Crayon ouvrira en fin de semaine et se positionnant comme la première société à exister au sein de Second Life. Il s’agira d’une société de conseil pour gérer des opérations de communications et de marketing. Leur offre est encore théorique mais s’ils peuvent traduire cela en actions concrètes pour aider les marques et les sociétés à investir dans Second Life alors ils auront un atout important.
.