Digital Marketing Blog

One of the cover feature’s in Wired magazine’s September edition is “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet” by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff.

…the business forces lining up behind closed platforms are big and getting bigger. This is seen by many as a battle for the soul of the digital frontier.

The Internet is the real revolution, as important as electricity; what we do with it is still evolving. As it moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open Web was an adolescent phase…

It’s a sensational piece by any standard, transparently aimed at generating buzz by offering up some apparently controversial views for debate. Fair enough. Wired has to sell its magazine and online advertising after all. The front cover of Wired is certainly no stranger to headlines involving the end of one thing or the death of something else:

 
Advertising, science and radio all seem to be doing just fine.

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen).

Despite the sensationalism, it’s a well-crafted and thought-provoking article, but supporting it’s conclusions is a convincing-looking chart plastered across a double-page spread. Cisco estimates are quoted as the source:

The Web is … just one of many applications that exist on the Internet … This architecture — not the specific applications built on top of it — is the revolution.

Following his return from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, even “Google Guy” Matt Cutts was biting on the headline (and no doubt biting his tongue) when he tweeted about how he was looking forward to curling up with Wired and finding out exactly why the web is dead. Kevin Savetz responded swiftly with some much needed clarity:

Look at the chart again, but this time look a little closer. See how not just DNS, but FTP and Email apparently account for next to zero Internet traffic? The chart just doesn’t pass the common-sense test.

For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible. This was all inevitable. It is the cycle of capitalism. The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control.

The buzz was already buzzing by the time the UK edition went to print, but Wired UK chose to simply publish the original article, which is something of a shame because a post-article debate between Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle and Chris Anderson, provided some valuable perspective. It concludes with a comment from John Battelle …

As a last word, I’d like to say that if the scope of the piece was really just about the web as a viable model for “professional content” as we see it, then splashing “The Death of the Web” on the cover might be, well, overstating the case just a wee bit…

In the UK edition at least, all this hyperbole overshadowed the more significant main cover story:

…the tech titans taking on Silicon Valley…this time to win

…London’s digital powerbrokers are backing European start-ups to become the next Facebooks and Googles…

Quoting the likes of Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital, Mike Lynch of Autonomy and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, the aspirational article paints a positive and optimistic picture.

…smart European start-ups are more likely than ever to become the next global giants.

In the next decade, it’s going to be more important to be global.

European businesses tend to be more global from the off.

…the real centre of gravity for start-ups is London, which provides the deepest pool of technical, legal, financial and marketing expertise.

…although entrepreneurs on this side of the Atlantic usually receive far less funding than their US peers … this has tended to make them more capital efficient.

…adjusted for size, the European VC industry has three times as many exits that provide a return of ten times the original investment.

In the past five years, an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists [has been] emerging which understands you can build a billion-dollar business in Europe.

Such an “ecosystem” is what has allowed Silicon Valley to thrive … nearly all are within easy travelling distance of the same coffee shops in a few square kilometres of California.

How ironic that the success of the Internet’s most influential players, including many social media giants, is due in some large part not to technology and online interaction, but to good old fashioned human contact.

Ironic maybe, but reassuring to hear nonetheless. The secret’s still in who you know, not what you know.

This down-to-earth reality of human nature is something that Englishman-abroad, Ben Smith, of Kansas-based social media consulting firm Social:IRL, is keen to keep in perspective:

…the real power of social media is in its ability to make a difference offline. To create online communities that impact the offline world around them. To create online engagements that have a tangible offline benefit to an individual, business, organization or community.

After all, the Internet, the web and other apps that run over it, and social media in particular, are all just a means to an end.

‘Web Is Dead’ illustration by Charles Guan for Wired Magazine