What are they key trends to digital economy? What will follow the Google dynasty? And why do local search servers belong to the most important providers in the social web? These questions were answered by a fascinating study by the Zukunftsinstituts.
“The Net Community – Key Trends of the Digital Age” is the name of the approximately 200 page work, that so extensively reviewed almost all facets of digital life like almost no other publication in the German language in the past years. One of the most interesting points made: the Internet will someday be integrated into so many facets of life, that we will no longer be aware of it’s true reach. The authors call this fourth and final phase of the net evolution “The Return to Reality”.

The study claims:

‘In the fourth and final phase, the internet will vanish, because it is everywhere – as paradoxical as this may sound. The internet no longer leaves an impression. It’s a standard, much like the telephone today. Access to the net is becoming more and more accessible, especially mobile. The presented women is reading a book – mind you, not an “Amazon Kindle” or “iPad”. However, what we do not see is who recommended this book to the woman, how it was distributed, produced, and what it means to be an author in the 21st century. These are points that are hardly made in the constant development of new technologies and IT-applications – be it electronic paper, artificially intelligent refrigerators, or dance classes in second life.’

Okay, Second Life (does that even exist anymore?) is not really the platform that we think will be a deciding factor. The grueling agglomeration of terms like “webtop”, “lossless audio”, or “augmented desktop” has little to do with internet trends, but rather with an amount of coquetry from the authors.

The high amount of clear examples for the digitalization of different sectors of life is also successfully demonstrated – from leisure and culture, health and diet, to societal sectors like studying, working, and even church.

The internet’s trend towards “vanishing” is confirmed by the generation of the digital natives, or the generation that has bathed itself in digital, according to the authors. A parallel use of the various forms of media is completely natural for them, and the internet is simply a part of it.

What we were especially excited about: local search offerings are capturing a central role in the development of the web. The World Wide Web is especially making access to local information more simple and comfortable. “Already today, a quarter of searches conducted on Google are locally motivated. This means that people want to know where the best hair salon in the city is, or how to get to the train station as quickly as possible.”

The clash of the titans and the local ad market is embodied precisely, for example with Bing’s surge forward in the map segment and the cooperation between Bing’s operator Microsoft and Facebook. The study implies that the latter is an example of a “opinion confirming instance” and guaranteed no neutral platform for the formation of political will – just as long as the like button isn’t graced by a dislike button, this estimation is pretty valid. The same applies to Twitter and it’s “truth resistant” rumor waves.

The large swing in digital development is in the realm of mobile applications, as shown in the study. An example of such is mobile couponing, but also location-based services for indoors, like shopping centers, will be less important. See Micello. An interesting application from South Africa: Motribe is a mobile community that mobile phone users can use to link up with others with similar interests. The economy is growing in the mobile branch – especially small business like the locally famous Crème-brûlée man in Los Angeles who’s using Twitter.

Conclusion: the scenario of the study in all its compactness is almost a little too fast-paced. But for those that are interested in getting a look into internet trends for the coming years, especially marketing managers, then this is a perfect compendium. But for 190 Euros, the study isn’t exactly cheap…

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Andreas Haderlein, Janine Seitz: Die Netzgesellschaft – Schlüsseltrends des
digitalen Lebens. Hrsg: Zukunftsinstitut GmbH. Kelkheim 2011, 210 Seiten,
190 Euro.