Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

Surveying the Landscape Sept. 2016

Peter Gasston
September 01, 2016

Surveying the Landscape Sept. 2016

From native apps to closed platforms to messenger bots, there are many threats to the influence and long-term health of the web. But perhaps its not time to give up on the browser just yet: the web could be sufficiently flexible to find new roles and new opportunities in the technology landscape of today and the near future.
Presented at Front End Conf, Zürich

Peter Gasston

September 01, 2016
Tweet

More Decks by Peter Gasston

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. The realistic danger isn’t that the web disappears, but that

    it gets marginalized. medium.com/@cdixon/the-internet-economy-fc43f3eff58a Chris Dixon
  2. In 2016, the still-vast and still-growing web is comparatively diminished.

    Slightly newer platforms, such as Instagram and Vine, hardly touch it; Snapchat doesn’t even acknowledge it. theawl.com/2016/02/been-stuck-at-99-percent-for-like-a-year John Herrman
  3. Nearly one in two internet users say privacy and security

    concerns have stopped them from doing basic things online. washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/13/new-government-data-shows-a-staggering-number-of-americans-have-stopped-basic-online-activities/
  4. Having a legacy business configured around a website is now

    almost as much of a headache as the rumbling printing press, fuelled by paper and money. theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/21/publishers-adblocking-advertising-mobile Emily Bell
  5. The idea won’t be to start a website. That will

    be dead.
 The individual website won’t matter. forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/09/09/mediums-evan-williams-to-publishers-your-website-is-toast/ Evan Williams
  6. Running our own blog system is a classic case of

    the cobbler’s shoe syndrome. m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-moves-to-medium-c8083ce19686 David Heinemeier Hansson
  7. A lot of designers are still focused on building websites

    and I'm not sure that's a growth business anymore. mashable.com/2016/05/30/facebook-end-of-websites …
  8. Mobile has fundamentally changed the dynamics of how information is

    distributed. mashable.com/2016/05/30/facebook-end-of-websites Jon Lax
  9. A company that can claim nearly every internet-using adult as

    a user is less a partner than a context. nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-totally-insane-unintentionally-gigantic-hyperpartisan-political-media-machine.html John Herrman
  10. The new technologies of the 20th century eventually evolved into

    privately controlled industrial behemoths through which the flow and nature of content would be strictly controlled. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires Tim Wu
  11. 0 1 2 3 4 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

    2017 2018 Social Media Messaging Internet
  12. 108m people in India came online in 2015 864m not

    yet online youtube.com/watch?v=E6hGubMkNfM
  13. 1 hour of minimum wage Cost of visiting 15 web

    pages in India (estimate) Photo: Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters
  14. 15% of avg. months income For 1GB prepaid data in

    Myanmar (estimate) Photo: Lauren Leatherby / NPR
  15. The telcos operate on pre-paid systems. Nobody has a credit

    card. Everyone buys top-up from top-up shops… They feel each megabyte. theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812 …
  16. Facebook has a compelling advantage over other news apps or

    even Twitter: The content of many posts and news items live inside Facebook itself. theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812 Craig Mod
  17. Awareness of the internet in developing countries is very limited.

    In fact, for many users, Facebook is the internet, as it’s often the only accessible application. qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/ Leo Mirani
  18. The amount of content that lives in Facebook will only

    increase. For those who are data sensitive, this is a clear virtue. theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812/ Craig Mod
  19. Stories [shared on Facebook] take an average of eight seconds

    to load, by far the slowest single content type. media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles
  20. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten

    times faster than standard mobile web articles. media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles
  21. Rise of the meta platforms and the new ‘web browser’

    Paul Kinlan paul.kinlan.me/rise-of-the-meta-platforms
  22. Many of the platforms on mobile are choosing to host

    content within their own app and this is a direct and compelling threat to the web. paul.kinlan.me/rise-of-the-meta-platforms Paul Kinlan
  23. Canvas loads quickly, as much as ten times faster than

    the standard mobile web. canvas.facebook.com
  24. In a way, Facebook [has] made the browser wars irrelevant

    by essentially itself becoming the browser. medium.freecodecamp.com/ghost-in-the-machine-snapchat-isnt-mobile-first-it-s-something-else-entirely-4f6c265152a2 Ben Basche
  25. The more it succeeds, the more Facebook warps a universe

    of internet content, industry norms, and consumer habits around itself.
 Facebook in effect becomes the mobile internet. wired.com/2016/08/facebook-isnt-just-good-mobile-mobile-works-now/ Davey Alba
  26. Daily and weekly use cases dominate the apps that get

    downloaded and used. But what about the software we use less often… … news.greylock.com/the-conversational-economy-whats-causing-the-bot-craze-4dd8f1b44ba1
  27. … the brands we may interact with once only every

    few months, or spontaneously when we don’t have a fast connection? Sarah Guo news.greylock.com/the-conversational-economy-whats-causing-the-bot-craze-4dd8f1b44ba1
  28. Access method for mobile shoppers % France Italy Spain UK

    Germany 52.1 59.3 43.1 44.7 41.9 60.1 60.5 66.4 66.6 67.3 Browser App comscore.com/Insights/Data-Mine/Mobile-App-vs-Mobile-Browser
  29. While in the West companies are still native-first (usually iOS-first),

    in China the most important presence one may have is a mobile-optimised website. medium.com/@alxdwn/debunking-wechat-e5805e358f8 Alessio Basso
  30. Technology does not have intrinsic value. It has to deliver

    value by enhancing the way we experience the world around us. wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/11/features/wired-world-2016-yves-behar Yves Behar
  31. Choosing the web to enable experiences in the physical world

    doesn’t just expand the possibility space for IoT, it compels us to re-think the very shape of the web… slideshare.net/yiibu/the-internet-of-things-is-for-people …
  32. … from a network of monolithic ‘destinations’ to one of

    small, non-linear, distributed, and serendipitously discoverable (and ideally shareable) experiences. slideshare.net/yiibu/the-internet-of-things-is-for-people Stephanie & Bryan Rieger
  33. In the context of AR, equating the browser to web

    is not only inaccurate but limiting. medium.com/web-ar/new-challenges-ar-will-pose-for-the-web-48b754dfcdbc ‘saranyan’
  34. If we are going to continue to use “the web”

    as a label then it needs to represent a 20+ year vision that transcends web browsers. wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/459 Allen Wirfs-Brock
  35. I don’t define “the web” as websites alone, but rather

    as any user experience that’s delivered across multiple channels and devices. recode.net/2016/6/3/11841458/heres-how-the-web-gets-conversation-optimized Dries Buytaert
  36. What if everything was powered by “The Web”, but you

    never saw a browser? medium.com/dev-channel/the-headless-web-de81ab21651f Paul Kinlan
  37. A containerized, embeddable article that travels to any site with

    brand, revenue, analytics, and links attached. medium.com/@stephanierieger/why-conversational-commerce-may-be-our-best-chance-to-re-imagine-the-web-32af5e22f799 Kevin Kelly
  38. The universally accessible, multi-device and multi-context web is there to

    enhance native infrastructure — not the other way around. medium.com/@stephanierieger/why-conversational-commerce-may-be-our-best-chance-to-re-imagine-the-web-32af5e22f799 Stephanie Rieger
  39. The web we build today will be the foundation for

    generations to come. It's crucial we get this right. buytaert.net/can-we-save-the-open-web Dries Buytaert