2006 Web Technology Trends

December 11, 2006 /28 comments2006 Web Technology Trends
It‘s December already and so it‘s about that time to reflect on what has happened in Web Technology during 2006 - and ponder what 2007 may bring. Over the next few weeks Read/WriteWeb is going to publish some in-depth posts analyzing the trends and new products we‘ve seen in 2006, as well as musing on some specific things we‘ll probably see in 2007.
To kick this series off, here is an overview of some high level trends from 2006. In our next post, we‘ll make predictions for 2007. We‘re also looking for YOUR feedback, to ensure that what we cover over the next few weeks is complete.
I have to thank kiwi journalist Mark Evans for the inspiration for this series. Mark recently had an article published in Management Magazine that outlined Web trends for 2006 and 2007. Mark interviewed me for that article and so this post (and the next) will utilize much of the thinking I did to contribute to Mark‘s article. Here goes...
2006 Review
- Undoubtedly 2006 has been the year of the social network. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook have been the three outstanding success stories - but also impressive was Bebo (in the UK particularly) and there was strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks like Flickr and del.icio.us. The zenith of this social networking craze was probablyGoogle buying YouTube for $1.65 B.
- RSS continues to inch towards the mainstream - Yahoo integrated it intoY! Mail Beta, Microsoft is utilizing it more (e.g. integrated into IE7), Google came out with Google Base and theGData format (which is based on the RSS variant, ATOM). While 2006 can‘t be seen as the breakthrough year for RSS in the mainstream, we will probably see RSS bloom in 2007 as a result of the groundwork done in ‘06 by the big Internet companies. Note that there have been recent murmurs that Yahoo isscaling back RSS, but I think this is a short-term trend only.
- 2006 was also the year that Web 2.0 got overhyped and the term is now generally accepted as just a marketing term, akin to Dot Com. But whatever you call it - I prefer to use the term ‘Social Web‘ or even ‘read/write Web‘ nowadays - this current era of the Web is making a big impact. Mainstream media is taking on board many read/write philosophies. This is evidenced in many ways - e.g. News Corp acquiring MySpace and seeing enormous growth; blogs are now accepted by mainstream media and businesses; etc. Also the overwhelming presence of media peopleat the 2006 Web 2.0 Summit was evidence that Social Web trends are influencing a broader cross-spectrum of people now.
- In 2006 Amazon came out with some startling new web technologies - Mechanical Turk, S3 (online storage) andEC2. Their push to be a majorweb services infrastructure platform was one of the more intriguing strategies from an Internet bigco this year.
- On the other big companies... Googledominated the news and buzz this year, Microsoftpushed ahead with its Windows Live strategy (its Web-based suite of products and services), and Yahoo had a steady product year (but ending withorganizational issues). Apple continued to dominate theonline music market (forcing Microsoft tocompete head-on) and has also entered the video space with gusto.
- Lots of bigco partnering. Allow me to quote directly from Mark Evans here, as he captured this trend very nicely: "Ebay and Yahoo have snuggled up together, announcing in May that Yahoo would serve display ads to Ebay’s US users and promote Paypal – Ebay’s payment service – to Yahoo users. In August, Ebay signed Google to serve ads to international Ebay users. A dollar each way, perhaps?"
- 2006 also saw the return of the VC money (see web 2.0 hype above!). AlthoughVC money this time round seems to be much more circumspect and generally lower valuations than in the dot com boom. Indeed an associated trend is that web startups are increasingly going it alone and bootstrapping, thanks to open source technologies (e.g. the LAMP platform) and ability to work anywhere anytime. On the flip side (pardon the pun), it still pays to be located in Silicon Valley - as that is where the key networking and fundraising activity still takes place.
- Localization really matters in Web space - for exampleTradeMe dominates New Zealand traffic and similar local products often outrank the likes of Yahoo and Google in their local markets. The larger trend here is that cultural and language differences mean that big US companies don‘t always dominate in international markets. Having said that, there is also a lot of overseascloning of successful Silicon Valley apps (e.g. digg, flickr). See Read/WriteWeb‘s continuingcoverage of international markets for individual country drill-downs.
- The consumerization of the enterprise has been an emerging trend all year. More and more social web apps are coming into the enterprise (e.g. Skype, IM), and organizations are adopting read/write Web philosophies. Corporate blogging got popular in 2006 and blogs are usually part of the mix now in marketing plans.
- In particular, I‘ve been tracking the trend ofWeb Office. As well as lots of startup action (Zoho, Zimbra, ThinkFree, et al), late this year saw a flurry of action from Google in this space - Google Apps For Your Domain, the acquisitions of Writely andJotSpot, the launch of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and more. In 2007 a major area of focus will be the increasing competition in office software between Google and Microsoft.
- Widgets (mini web apps) were all the rage this year, culminating in its own conference. Related to this,‘personalized start pages‘ (live.com, netvibes, pageflakes, etc) ramped up, enabling users to collect their widgets together on the one site.
- Online video was hot, hot, hot this year! There are currently a host ofYouTube wannabes on the market. The best chance for success for all these startups vying for attention, is to either come out with a next-generation product that takes online video functionality to the next level and/or target a specific niche market.
- VoIP spaceshowed signs of hotting up. Skype now has a bunch of new competitors, all aiming to disrupt the existing telecoms industry.
- Hybrid web/desktop apps (or as Read/WriteWebtermed it "webified desktop apps") came into play a lot more this year. For examplethe Times Reader, built using Microsoft WPF technology. Also noteworthy isAdobe‘s Apollo platform andLaszlo‘s rich internet apps platform.
- Browser Wars 2.0. Firefox enjoyed strong growth this year and released its 2.0 browserin October. 2006 was also (not coincidentally) the year that Microsoft finally upgraded its Internet Explorer browser,to 7.0.
- From a blog perspective,Techcrunch established itself as the blog at the center of all the web 2.0 action - attracting aspiring startups likemoths around a flame. Other tech blogs like Gigaom, VentureBeat and Read/WriteWeb itself, have also experienced excellent growth this year.
- Ajax hadstrong growth this year and according to some reports is not that far behind Flash now.
-World Internet Penetration is 16% and growing - Asia in particular is ramping up fast! Also noteworthy is that3/4 of traffic to top websites is international.
Those were the major trends from the Web this year, but there are many other smaller trends. Here is a starter for 10:
RSS filtering, while not as strong as I expected this year, is still making progress via very small startups. Thenew Google Reader also had some interesting filtering features. HoweverPubSub carked it. The commodization of RSS Readers - e.g. the Pluck Readershut down.P2P traffic continued to grow. The WebOS (virtual desktop) was a relatively small market this year, but a lot of startupsentered the space.Digital Reading market hotted up - Microsoft, Sony and Adobe all released new e-reading products.Asian Mobile Web years ahead - while the Mobile Web has a long way to go in places like the US and NZ, in Asia the mobile Web had continued growth in 2006.e-learning had strong growth in 2006. There was hot competitionbetween blog vendors - e.g. SixApart vs Wordpress Innovative distributed portal plays aregrowing fast - e.g. edgeio, simplyhired. ADD MORE IN THE COMMENTS...
As the final bullet point implies, so much more has happened in 2006 than I can hope to cover in one post. So please add other 2006 Web trends to the comments. After all, the only way this list is going to be comprehensive is via the Power of the Many ;-)