The Future of The Internet is Cloudy

One of the things I love about new year’s is read­ing about year-​​end pre­dic­tions. I don’t know why. Per­haps it’s my curi­ous nature.

But I’m fas­ci­nated when I see where some peo­ple think we’re headed. There are some blog­gers whose pre­dic­tions fas­ci­nate me. Two have cap­tured my atten­tion: Read­WriteWeb and the Man­hat­tan Mar­ket­ing Maven.

And yes, even yours truly loves mak­ing them, too.

As with all pre­dic­tions, it’s no dif­fer­ent than flip­ping a coin. The law of aver­ages kicks in. But it’s not a 50–50 ratio. A third will come true, usu­ally dead on the money. Another third won’t at all. And the final third may come true, but not exactly as predicted.

I’m sub­jected to that same law, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Nev­er­the­less, in keep­ing with that sacred tra­di­tion of new-​​year pro­jec­tions, prog­nos­ti­ca­tions, and picayune pon­tif­i­ca­tions, here are two major areas I believe we will see hap­pen­ing in the new year, if not the near future. Are you ready? Here goes…

1. Internet Marketing Will Grow Up

Web 2.0 is essen­tially a sign that the Inter­net is grow­ing up. It’s not fully an adult, yet. But I guess you can say it’s now a “teenager” rather than an “infant.”

As it went through puberty, it was an authority-​​challenging, angst-​​filled, hormone-​​raging, know-​​it-​​all, rebel­lious, moody, matur­ing, com­ing of age of sorts. It wants all the ben­e­fits of adult­hood but with­out all of its respon­si­bil­i­ties. It prefers to remain a child.

Inter­net mar­ket­ing is an exam­ple. It’s grow­ing, and will con­tinue to grow, but not with­out its grow­ing pains. It will explode, but the old way we used, and used to look at, Inter­net mar­ket­ing is going to rad­i­cally change. We’re see­ing a lot of evi­dence of this already.

Yes, the indus­try is going through a major shakeup.

(As an exam­ple, our recent major announce­ment explain­ing the dras­tic change in the way we teach Inter­net mar­ket­ing is a reflec­tion, and the result, of this evolution.)

This shakeup will involve many dif­fer­ent things. It’s partly due to new reg­u­la­tions, partly due to the reces­sion, and partly due to people’s grow­ing level of sophis­ti­ca­tion with the web. That’s why I believe Inter­net mar­ket­ing will no longer be con­sid­ered a “niche.”

In fact, Inter­net mar­ket­ing will be less and less about…

• Inter­net marketing;
• Mak­ing money;
• And gam­ing systems.

The indus­try has grown to the point where mass mar­kets are cross­ing what Geof­frey Moore calls “the chasm.” In other words, it’s no longer a hot new niche exploited merely by geeky inno­va­tors and early adopters who wish to use the web to make a few bucks.

We’re going to see Inter­net mar­ket­ing enter­ing the main­stream. We’re going to see more and more peo­ple try­ing it for the first time — new­bies to Inter­net mar­ket­ing who want to find work or start a real busi­ness online. One that’s not about Inter­net mar­ket­ing itself.

Stated sim­ply, the land­scape of Inter­net mar­ket­ing — and the peo­ple in it, both the mar­ket and the mar­keters — is rad­i­cally chang­ing and will con­tinue to change in 2010.

Take a look at all the major Inter­net mar­ket­ing play­ers online these days. One can instantly see how the ros­ter has dra­mat­i­cally changed, even in just a few years. Many new faces have emerged, and many old ones have dis­ap­peared or gone underground.

By the way, I know some pun­dits claim oth­er­wise — often to counter the many rumors that the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try is sat­u­rated, over­pop­u­lated, or dying alto­gether. They do so, par­tic­u­larly if they have a vested inter­est in it or a prod­uct related to it.

These pun­dits claim that the Inter­net mar­ket­ing mar­ket is still a per­fect niche to get into. I agree it’s alive and well, but I don’t agree it will be the per­fect niche. At least, not the usual “Inter­net mar­keter sell­ing Inter­net mar­ket­ing to Inter­net mar­keters” niche.

(I often quote Paul Myers, who once said that the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try is made up of a bunch of inces­tu­ous can­ni­bals. I think that quote is quite befit­ting, here.)

We’re going to see more and more diver­si­fi­ca­tion. More and more actual mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ples, strate­gies, and tac­tics applied to the Inter­net. More and more strate­gies out­side of Inter­net mar­ket­ing, par­tic­u­larly out­side the bizoppy, make-​​money arenas.

I’m talk­ing about real busi­nesses sell­ing real stuff using real mar­ket­ing strate­gies. And by “real” I don’t mean just phys­i­cal prod­ucts and hard goods. I include dig­i­tal prod­ucts, too.

I’m talk­ing about busi­nesses that sell non-​​Internet-​​marketing stuff. To me, too many prod­ucts appear like ponzi schemes, where some­one teaches how to make money online, and the way they make their money is by sell­ing… their make-​​money product.

No. I mean real stuff. Not snake-​​oil. Not “secrets.” Not “how to game [tech­nol­ogy, sys­tem, or web­site] to get a gazil­lion vis­i­tors or make a gazil­lion dol­lars overnight.” And cer­tainly not cir­cu­lar, “Make money by becom­ing an affil­i­ate of my make-​​money product!”

(OK, I know this sounds more like a rant than a pre­dic­tion. But hear me out.)

True, when some­thing new enters the scene, even­tu­ally we see its mis­use, overuse, and abuse. It’s sad but inevitable. There’s the abuse of sys­tems as well as the abuse of the peo­ple using them. Inter­net mar­ket­ing is by no means any different.

But nov­elty usu­ally wears off and the new­ness becomes lack­lus­ter over time. Any new tac­tic and mar­ket, as well as their abuse, have a shelf life. They die or they change.

You can only trick search engines, social net­works, CPA net­works, or what­ever for so long, until these get wise to such tac­tics, change their algo­rithms, or become so sat­u­rated they kill off a large num­ber of abusers in one vast, mer­ci­less cleanup attempt.

(Like the many “Google slaps,” for instance. Or the recent FTC changes.)

James Allen, author of “As a Man Thin­keth,” wrote: “Cir­cum­stance does not make the man: it reveals him to him­self.” It’s a beau­ti­ful quote, but to me it has a lot more meaning.

I think it’s a lot like another famous say­ing by Dr. Wayne Dyer, who once said, “If you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice.” In other words, when some­one is under pres­sure, what comes out is really what’s inside. It’s who they are at their core.

The reces­sion is one such pres­sure. Prob­a­bly the biggest one.

When times are great, ques­tion­able tac­tics and bor­der­line busi­nesses tend to eas­ily slip under the radar. Peo­ple are not pay­ing that much atten­tion. And it makes per­fect sense, since we have more dis­pos­able income to take risks try­ing new things.

But when times are tough, a marketer’s true col­ors start to shine through. Good, decent, hon­est, and eth­i­cal mar­keters stand out. Equally yet con­versely, scam­mers, spam­mers, and smarmy snake oil ped­dlers seem to come out of the wood­work, too.

More impor­tantly, when hit with finan­cial stress, peo­ple are either extremely des­per­ate and vul­ner­a­ble, or extremely cau­tious and cyn­i­cal. People’s bull­shit detec­tors are on high alert. And it makes either side con­spic­u­ous, self-​​evident, and eas­ier to spot…

… Be they good or bad, be they white hat or black hat, and be they market-​​focused or money-​​focused (i.e., sell­ing at the ser­vice of oth­ers ver­sus at the expense of others).

We’re going to see that divid­ing line get­ting thicker, and gray areas becom­ing less and less gray. And we’re going to see solid, long-​​term, real busi­nesses sell­ing real stuff becom­ing more dis­tinct from the drive-​​by, one-​​hit-​​at-​​a-​​time, ser­ial mar­keters.

Bot­tom line, don’t expect apple juice when squeez­ing an orange. If you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. You get what’s truly inside, at their core.

Mar­malade, anyone?

2. There's a Cloud Hanging Over Us

One of the most recent devel­op­ments going on with the Inter­net is the idea of cloud com­put­ing. I sub­mit that cloud com­put­ing will become more and more pop­u­lar, if not the norm. Whether you know it or not, you’re prob­a­bly using it already.

Are you using an online backup ser­vice? Are you trans­fer­ring files from one com­puter to another using a file­shar­ing ser­vice, or per­haps a web­host? Or sim­ply, are you using an autore­spon­der ser­vice rather than send­ing emails directly from your computer?

What cloud com­put­ing means is, rather than hav­ing all your files, soft­ware, mul­ti­me­dia, links, even periph­er­als, all cen­trally located on your com­puter, you can access, and work from, appli­ca­tions, files, and periph­er­als on, or dis­trib­uted through, the Internet.

There are three lev­els of cloud computing:

1. Infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice (IaaS).
2. Plat­form as a ser­vice (PaaS).
3. Soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS).

Infrac­struc­ture is where com­put­ers and hard­ware con­nect with each other via net­works or, more sig­nif­i­cantly, the Inter­net — secure chan­nels on the Inter­net, to be specific.

You may have heard of things like “Intranet.” Today, we are see­ing an increase in VPNs (i.e., vir­tual pri­vate net­works) and RDPs (i.e., remote desk­tops), where we can access other com­put­ers through the Inter­net, and do so remotely, pri­vately, and securely.

Even in the home, we are see­ing less of a need to buy mul­ti­ple periph­er­als like print­ers, hard dri­ves, and mul­ti­me­dia play­ers, and using “servers” instead, within the home using Wi-​​Fi, to share those resources among mul­ti­ple computers.

Sec­ondly, cloud com­put­ing as for plat­form is the realm of the oper­at­ing sys­tem and OS core ser­vices, like Win­dows for exam­ple. More and more oper­at­ing sys­tems and ser­vices are avail­able on, and dis­trib­uted through, the Inter­net as well.

For exam­ple, when you had no choice but to buy, down­load, or install Microsoft Office or some other com­pat­i­ble soft­ware to print a sim­ple Word Doc­u­ment, now you can sim­ply use Google Doc­u­ments or ZoHo online. I even use it to con­vert doc­u­ments in a snap.

Of course, Microsoft is not tak­ing this sit­ting down. They are con­vert­ing much of their soft­ware to a web-​​based for­mat as well, such as the upcom­ing “Office Live.” Google is com­ing out with its own oper­at­ing sys­tem, which will be almost com­pletely web-​​based.

As for soft­ware, it’s self-​​explanatory. Just like Google Doc­u­ments men­tioned ear­lier, many pro­grams, which used to be avail­able in stand­alone exe­cuta­bles, are now avail­able online — either as pay-​​for-​​access, ad-​​supported, or password-​​protected services.

Even email clients are slowly becom­ing dinosaurs in a world where POP accounts are being con­verted into IMAP (where email is read, sent, stored, and manip­u­lated directly on the server, with­out the need to down­load them, and no mat­ter where you are).

If you’re a mar­keter, then you’ve likely encoun­tered some form of cloud computing…

… From using Gmail for your email and using an online autore­spon­der ser­vice for build­ing your lists, to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with staff, clients, or free­lancers using social net­works like Face­book, Twit­ter, Base­Cam­pHQ, or other sim­i­lar col­lab­o­ra­tive tools.

For exam­ple, ever since Sylvie and I have started using Ama­zon S3 for stor­ing our mul­ti­me­dia files, we have saved a ton of money, band­with, and resources by serv­ing the files from a larger-​​capacity and much more robust ser­vice such as Amazon.

The key ben­e­fits, of course, is the intra-​​operability and cross-​​platform com­pat­i­bil­ity of work­ing in a cloud envi­ron­ment. It doesn’t mat­ter what kind of com­puter you have. All you need is a browser and an Inter­net con­nec­tion, and you’re off to the races.

Sure, there are risks, such as expos­ing our­selves to hacker attempts — both while in tran­sit through the Inter­net and once it’s saved in the cloud.

Granted, pow­er­ful encryp­tion pro­tects the infor­ma­tion in tran­sit. The safety of where the infor­ma­tion resides is a big­ger risk, in my esti­ma­tion. So it’s dou­bly impor­tant to ensure the infor­ma­tion is pro­tected on high-​​quality, highly secure servers.

Above all, the biggest risk, of course, is your con­nec­tion to the Inter­net itself. If you lose it or work on a poor con­nec­tion, your abil­ity to work via the cloud will be ham­pered. But as broad­band becomes ubiq­ui­tous, this is becom­ing less of a concern.

Another big ben­e­fit are cloud-​​managed updates and upgrades.

Rather than forc­ing you to down­load the lat­est updates, the soft­ware or appli­ca­tion can be cen­trally updated, behind the scenes in one fell swoop, for all its users. Just one flip of the prover­bial switch, and bam! Every­one has the lat­est ver­sion. Instantly.

No need to wait for an update to prop­a­gate to all the users, or for users to uncover bugs as their sys­tems and soft­ware con­fig­u­ra­tions vary so sig­nif­i­cantly from one and other.

But the one area I want to focus our atten­tion on is SAAS, that is, soft­ware as a ser­vice.

This area, I believe, will explode in the com­ing months if not weeks.

We are see­ing more and more of this already: mem­ber­ship web­sites, online train­ing courses, stream­ing mul­ti­me­dia pro­grams, dynamic con­tent, and web-​​based soft­ware — with ad-​​supported access, password-​​protected access, or full access at a recur­ring fee.

Take online photo edit­ing ser­vices, like Pic­nik or Pho­to­shop Express, for exam­ple. Rather than forc­ing you to buy a $800 gorilla like Pho­to­shop, or its cheaper alter­na­tives, you can eas­ily upload, manip­u­late, and store pho­tos online, either for free or a small fee.

Bot­tom line, if there’s some­thing that needs to be done on your com­puter, chances are there’s an online appli­ca­tion for it some­where. Some­where on the Inter­net, that is.

So my tip to you is, keep a watch­ful eye on what peo­ple are look­ing for.

If there’s a need some­where or a prob­lem that can be solved, don’t imme­di­ately jump to the idea of build­ing a stand­alone soft­ware, info­prod­uct, or mul­ti­me­dia piece.

Instead, think of build­ing a cen­trally located, password-​​protected, one-​​time signup or recurring-​​fee ser­vice model. Because there just might be a sil­ver lin­ing beyond that cloud — one you own that could poten­tially make you a lot of money.

About the Author

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