Heath Brownsworth

Whether you follow analysts and analyst firms or not, you have to appreciate that it takes a special kind of person to declare dead during his presentation the fundamental model for which the conference he has been invited to speak at is named.  That is exactly what George Colony of Forrester Research did at Le Web 2011 in Paris this week. In all fairness Le Web has morphed into a major technology conference that goes beyond the Web, but in promoting Forrester’s App Internet concept, Mr. Colony states without question that the Web model is dead.

The Web is Dead is one leg of a three legged stool that Forrester refers to as the “Three Social Thunderstorms”.   In support of his claim, Mr. Colony makes a critical distinction between the Web and the Internet and further explains the App Internet model.  While App Internet sounds a lot like client/server where powerful applications running locally ask servers for data over the network, thunderstorms two and three of the stool are of definite interest and merit further consideration:

• Social is saturated
• Most companies are moving towards social

Forrester and Colony believe that social is running out of both hours in the day and people.  He provides statistics that people now spend more time on social networks than they do exercising and practicing their faith.   Further he shows numbers that indicate an extremely high adoption rate of social technologies in the urban centers of the world.  The conclusion here is a simple one, social networks/platforms/applications must deliver more efficient, easier to use, higher value-to-time ratios than they do at present.

So why would companies want to move towards social?  Better customer interaction and customer self service.  Maybe not surprising, but companies appear to willing to traverse the uncertainties of social in order to get closer to their customers and further drive revenue.

Le Web has a reputation for being edgy, hopefully this time not at its own expense.

Heath-

Note: The term thunderstorm refers to Forrester’s belief that shifts in technology happen violently and abruptly rather than incrementally.

(Cross-posted @ Skywriting)