The Changing Profile of the Web

In the September 2010 issue of “Wired” magazine, the cover story is titled “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet” . The authors, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff have articulated the trends that I, and many of my colleagues have noticed and discussed. I culled out for our discussion two of these trends below.

First, I almost never read my email with a heavy weight client running on a laptop or desktop. When I read email, I open my email application (app) on my phone, if I want to search for an address, I open my search app, even if I happen to be setting next to my laptop. The same for my stock ticker, RSS feeds, and news updates. I prefer the experience and customized functionality of an application connecting to a web or cloud service over the generic browser experience.

Small focused applications are now the driving force for the new web, (dare I fall back on the over used Web 2.0). This of course is driven by the success of the iPhone and iPad and apps store model. The use of a generic browser is still necessary but far less compelling. I am not so much interested in browsing as I am in getting the information I am after, bundled into a increasing rich experience.

The second discussion point is the data from the graph below, from the article. Sources: Cisco estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko

Web traffic (browsing) peaked as a percent of US Internet traffic around 2000 and has been declining since and now stands around 23% of the traffic. As Jonathan L. Zittrain puts it in The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, “It is a mistake to think of the Web browser as the apex of the PC’s evolution.” Peer-to-peer (application to application or machine to machine) traffic is also around 23%. Email has shrunk from 4% in 1990 to less than 1% today.

However, the most surprising statistic to me, was that video traffic now makes up 51% of all US Internet traffic. How could this be? A bit of introspection was called for. I thought about how I and others consume video from the net. We have Netflix’s API embedded into our Wii and BlueRay players. We watch shows from iTunes and Hulu. A number of friends have disconnected their cable TV service and get there viewing content only from the net, a trend I see accelerating. An lets not forget the “grand daddy” of video service, “Youtube”. Google’s video service accounted for 72% of US video stream in 2009. I would find it hard to quantify the amount of time I have spent watching videos over the years. Hard to believe it is still not making money for Google. Of course there is probably some porn video traffic included in the 51%.

So why am I surprised? I believe it is something that has happen within the last five years, and being surrounded by it, I did not see the forest for the trees. Do you find these ratios surprising? Drop me a note and let me know.