Welcome to the beta of the new saila.com. Send in your bugs.
The death of the World Wide Web
It's somehow appropriate that, after another hiatus, I return to this column now. CBC Radio aired a program this week on Ideas called "The Archaeology of the Internet." As the national broadcaster maps out the medium's past, the future hangs in the balance.
The World Wide Web is dead, having toiled for six and a half years in obscurity. In its place: a shiny, wide-eyed medium known simply as the Web.
Marketing departments across the continent have finally managed to officially bring the Web into mainstream, due in part to the promise of wealth through e-commerce. This holiday season, the trade publications have been promoting e-commerce almost as hard as they pushed push last year.
The World Wide Web is dead because that term—and the network that was affiliated with that mindset—can no longer exist. The price is too high. Pumping out content and posting freeware to a grey Web page is no longer viable.
Nor can a company's online presence be a simple Web page; their online identity has to be a well-designed and well thought-out Web site. The content must be rich, informative, and orginal.
With the death of the geek-ruled World Wide Web, and the emergence of the consumer-orientated Web, the end user has also changed. Fewer people are fascinated by the inner workings of the hypertext transfer protocols, or the ramifications of creating a tag for drop shadows; now they want information they can use that day. And they want it personalized and easy to use.
Twenty percent of all Canadians go online, but the fastest growing segment of the Net's population are women, and those over 35. This new audience brings to the Web stability and a higher level of disposable income. What brought them online—be it their kids or pressures from work—doesn't matter, they are the stable core that can sustain an e-commerce industry built on the Web.
But like any other medium, such a massive demographic shift creates problems for the online media outlets as their core audience is quickly shrinking. And, naturally, advertisers want their products to appear on a Web site that attracts the most traffic. Especially now, as the affluence of the new demographic segment means advertisers can get more click-throughs for their buck.
Online media is at a crossroad
This is part of the reason why the massive CNET empire launched a cute site called Snap! designed to offer a friendly stepping stone to the rest of the Net. Snap! is a radical departure from the company's tech-news and software distribution services. Where those are targetted at the users who know why Java and JavaScript are completely different, Snap! is aimed at people who don't really care.
CNET's $6.15 million (U.S.) investment in Snap! is part of the reason why it declared a $9.2 million (U.S.) loss this last quarter. But I'm willing to bet the company will recover that through Snap! before the decade's end.
Even the hip-hype guide to the digital world is dramatically restructuring. Wired Ventures—parent company to Wired magazine and its online sister (and first major Webzine) HotWired—is also striving to attract the affluent new users. Wired's latest cover story is a survey of the new digital citizens, who as it turns, bare a striking resemblance to the new business elites.
It may just be a coincidence that the survey was followed by a series of dramatic announcements from the company (the resignation of the magazine's editor-in-chief Louis Rosetto; Wired Digital's decision to lay off 20 percent of its staff; and vicious rumours that the angst-filled e-zine Suck, among other Wired-affiliated Web sites, would be killed), but it's one big coincidence.
One thing is for certain, Wired Ventures has decided its time to get out of the red. And with new users demanding less Net-centric information, Wired Ventures may feel now is the time to broaden its digital audience.
While the online trade publications may be suffering, more generally interest publications are benefitting. Sympatico's NetLife: Canada's Home Internet Magazine serves about 25 million pages a month, and the printed version has a readership of 420,000 people, and is Canada's only consumer magazine with a completely wired audience.
Both Salon and Feed have successful established themselves as the thinking person's Webzines—akin to Atlantic Monthly and Harper's.
Even traditional Canadian publications have begun to develop real online content. The Toronto Star which I lambasted earlier this year, has put millions of dollars towards the operation of Star CitySearch—a more focused and editorially driven version of CNET's Snap!. CANOE continues its incredible success, and Toronto Life has teamed up with Microsoft to produce orginal content. In fact the software-giant everyone loves-to-hate will be launching next month one of the first Web sites in Canada covering Canadian news produced by Canadian journalists and meant for an online medium only.
Online journalism is at a turning point. Publishers and producers alike have an opportunity to tap into an eager, and educated, new market. But it is essential that they determine now what they want to be: a Webzine that produces quality online journalism, or an e-commerce driven site with some token editorial content.
Last Sunday David Crane—The Star's economics editor—wrote a column entitled "Creating demand for 'New Media' must be a priority." In it he wrote: "When we think about Canadian culture today, we have to think about Canadian content in the New Media." While this is slowly beginning to happen in journalism, the industry is still plagued financial problems created by the products it produces. "[H]ow do we ensure financing for small and mid-size companies," he asked, "whose main assets are people and copyright?"
It's never easy for publications to generate revenues and quality journalism, but—with the death of the geeks' World Wide Web and the lessons being learned from American new media— Canada is in a rare position: leap forward and push the limits of the new medium with evocative content, or let this burgeoning industry slowly wilt away.
There's not much time to decide.
