January 03, 2000 New Thinking:
Predictions for 2000

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1. There will be more than 200 million people using the Internet worldwide. The wider acceptance of set-top boxes for televisions could explode this figure
2. The 'World Wide' Web will look much less 'world-wide' as individual countries and cultures stamp their identity on it. This will result in the necessity to create multilingual versions of websites whose tone and business approach are founded in a particular culture
3. What will destroy the myth of the 'World Wide' Web is bandwidth. The difference between the experience of a user in a poor bandwidth country and one in a rich bandwidth country will be like rich and poor; upstairs, downstairs; black and white; chalk and cheese
4. The myth that it is cheap to develop for the Internet will be well and truly hammered, as companies realize that running a successful website requires quality staffing, ongoing development and substantial investment in promotion and marketing
5. Branding will be everything on the Internet, as all but the largest of brand websites find it increasingly difficult to attract visitors
6. Email will remain the killer application for the Internet but will cause serious headaches for organizations who do not have proper usage and storage/deletion policies
7. The Linux operating system and open source software in general will grow in acceptance though it will by no means topple Microsoft
8. Whether it happens in 1999 or not, Microsoft will have to be broken up. It has simply got too big, too all-powerful, and no matter what sort of public relations spin is put on it, this is not good for the consumer
9. The computer industry, having learned from Apple that consumers like products that have style, will start bringing out computers that have a bit of visual flair
10. Ecommerce, having become common in America, will gain ground in Europe, though the focus will still be business-to-business

Predictions for 2000

1. There will be 300 million Internet users worldwide, but many of the new users will access the Internet through mobile phones and Internet appliances
2. 2000 will be the year when the mobile Internet comes of age and will allow Europe to significantly close the gap with America
3. Asian consumer giants will become more dominant as consumer-focused Internet appliances become more prevalent. By the end of the year the concept of the PC will be fragmenting, particularly in the consumer market, into functional, easy-to-use, style-driven products
4. There will be a wave of closures and mergers of etailers as it is realized that true etailing is a very expensive and complex activity, and as customers only buy from the best and most reliable
5. Security will become an increasingly important concern, as the Internet becomes more open and complex and hackers and viruses strike with greater intensity
6. Many organizations will face a crisis with their intranets, that were established without any real plan, and in 2000 will become increasingly chaotic and in many cases go out of control
7. Information overload will become an even more critical issue, with many managers and information workers feeling that they are becoming less effective in their jobs
8. Once the Y2K Bug is out of the way, major budgets will be released by a whole range of organizations for significant Internet/intranet developments
9. Privacy and customer service will become dominant issues for consumers and governments will become much more active in legislating in these areas
10. With the continued expansion of the Internet network and the more gradual increase in bandwidth, the accepted wisdom that we should all store our information and software programmers on our hard disks will come under serious scrutiny. This will be because the Internet will start truly reflecting, ‘the network is the computer’ principle, as we begin to store more and more information in central servers, and pay-per-use or rent the latest version of the software we need over the Internet

Gerry McGovern


 

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