I've had a bit of fun this week watching the banter created by the Wired cover story and related articles titled "The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet". The idea, fueled by an infographic that shows the rapidly increasing percentage of Internet use devoted to other than visiting web sites, is that Internet use is changing, mostly caused by the shift to the richer experience of apps. Of course in any debate there needs to be at least two sides (in this one there are probably many more than two but still), so here's an article that takes the same infographic and shifts it to show the dramatic growth of the Internet. The truth, well, they're both accurate at least.
There was a time in the history of the web that the point was the destination, the site, the page. Search evolved to help find that destination. Remember web history though, the original web was static. You went to the destination and aside from reading / looking that was it. We evolved though, and soon along came the transaction web and ecommerce. Ecommerce was still mostly about the destination and the browser was king. There was a lot of talk about the browser as the interface to the app as more software became Internet capable. Portals were born and provided browser based windows into various enterprise tasks and activities.
In the next web era the social web started to change the nature of web use, and interacting, creating, sharing and learning became the drivers of activity. This new activity type started the move away from the web site as the destination in some small ways... social site updates via SMS, for example (you could also see the start of the increasing importance of the mobile Internet). The web became a media type and the Internet became the vehicle of content distribution. The two unique forms of web based social activity took shape, content or media and network or community.
The change from web destinations and browsers to apps can really be traced to Apple's introduction of the iPhone and the Apps Store. If you'll think back, the first iPhone did not have an apps store initially but instead had web based apps, which were really not so good. Once the apps moved to the device it opened up a much better user experience and a wider variety of potential activities on the mobile computing platform. The apps become the vehicle for both creating and consuming social content (through RSS and native content) and even provide a richer experience around ecommerce. Slate computing devices like the iPad, with their increase in screen real estate, have added to the app momentum.
User experience in the enterprise is a growing concern a companies hold static with their core enterprise systems in a tough economic environment that has taught many to stretch out upgrades and core system changes in favor of new vertical and other "edge" apps that provide higher value. Unfortunately these aging core systems, while adequately handling business requirements, provide a less than adequate user experience. In contrast the new Internet apps that have grown out of Web 2.0 have a simple and much improved user experience. Employees are increasingly looking for the same experience from enterprise systems and this desire is creating a great deal of friction and what I like to call the "bring your own workplace" where workers feel empowered to work around enterprise systems when those systems don't do the job or provide the desired user experience. This behavior has added to the accelerated adoption of these new Internet apps, particularly Internet apps available on new mobile devices.
The other contributing trend in the move away from web sites as destinations and the broader use of the Internet as the enabler of technological advancement is the proliferation of smart devices or as some call it the "Internet of things". These new smart devices span a wide range of activities / uses and generally include context awareness as a key component. Context awareness in apps (mostly location awareness at present but other context information could be useful, like "what task is the user trying to perform") improves the user experience but also adds important functionality. In smart devices context awareness can add all sorts of independent data from temperature to location. Fedex launched a business last year that utilizes context awareness, called Senseaware, that creates smart packages, a feature that could be very useful in shipping biomedical materials, for example. And the definition of smart device could vary widely as well, everything from a refrigerator to an automobile has the potential to be a smart Internet device.
So apps are cool again I guess...well, for me they always were. The Internet is the backbone for these new cool apps which are enabling rich user experiences with ubiquitous access across multiple device formats. I was in a meeting today at Citrix and I heard a statement that I think captures the new normal of computing, they said, "it's really about three screens (laptop / computer, mobile, slate) and a cloud", I like that thought. I'd maybe modify it a little though, at least for the future it's about "my choice of screens, a cloud, apps (especially context aware apps) and a world of connected smart devices". And when I say apps I'm talking about the new generation of apps with simple, clean user interfaces, people-centricity (which includes user configurability), device portability, and connectivity. I'd almost add embedded social but I think people-centricity captures that possibility. Is the web as a destination dead, no, but that's not the most important part of the Internet anymore (or maybe it never was), it's about connectivity.
Tags: Internet, web, mobile, applications, software, smart device, cloud
