The Web is Dead, it’s all Mobile now, for the next 5 minutes at least

I’ve been seeing several pieces pop up on my Twitter feed int he last few days announcing, with  various levels of hysteria, THE WEB IS DEAD!

This is the most comprehensive and considered.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/04/30/heres-why-google-and-facebook-might-completely-disappear-in-the-next-5-years/2/

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/wired-web-dead/

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-04-26/tech/29996901_1_mobile-apps-mobile-payments-mobile-device

I suspect that many of us get a feeling of vertigo when reading this stuff. I’m just getting to grips with Twitter and SEO and SEM, and I’m told that everything is going to change.

I do have one “But hang on a second” moment.

Mobile is the new thing. Tablets are selling faster than strawberries at WImbledon, but an awful lot of us sit in front of a big screen for an awful lot of time….and that won’t change, will it???

The point is, I guess, that we love our iPhones and HTC’s and the businesses that really deliver to a tiny screen will prosper, and some that don’t HOWEVER BIG will die. Or more accurately they will My Space. (verb: To My Space. Def: To look like you own the world one moment and then be nothing the next). My Space peaked at around the start of 2009.)

If you want to read a horror story, just read the My Space Wikipedia entry, or try Friends Reunited.

Which brings me to my point. Everything is getting faster.

Watch Sears struggle:

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/Assets/legacy/downloads/20120423SearsStock.htm

But Sears has buildings and property. It’s made of stuff. You don’t hear the word dotcom much any more but it does accurately express the fragility of internet businesses. They are just dots on a screen.

I have met many of our great British entrepreneurs through my work making business programmes at the BBC. It seems invidious to name names, but they all were convinced they were geniuses. They all made really clever moves into just the right business, at just the right time, and their businesses have sustained. Well done them. They all then tried new things and (mostly) failed.

Will our dotcom billionaires be so smart they can think of the next thing? Or will they be swept away like My Space?