2.6 Future – Web 3.0 or the end of existence?
This is how newspapers and magazines made their online presence in the world of Internet. In the fever of keeping up with the newest technologies (e.g. videotex) some of them lost many dollars and learnt many lessons. Where will the future bring us? When (if ever) will it turn out that the current online model is unprofitable and that new technologies must be used instead? Maybe the-next-big-thing is just behind the corner, waiting to be implemented… Let’s try to envision the future of online news.
“It goes without saying that new Net technologies are always under development-inside universities, think tanks, and big corporations, as much as Silicon Valley start-ups-and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web’s next generation [my italics] – Cade Metz from the PC Magazine refers to this new generation as Web 3.0 (2007).
Jerry Jang, the Co-founder and Chief Yahoo! of the Yahoo! Inc., at the Technet Summit in 2006 predicted what Web 3.0 will be: “You don’t have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium… the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications” (Farber, 2006).
What do you think the new (exciting?) developments will Web 3.0 bring along? Maybe something along the lines of ultimate interaction, e.g. by developing online relations through such platforms as Second Life? CNN already has an online presence in the game, as many other enterprises do.
Another option which comes to my mind is the total disappearance of newspapers and magazines from the print market all-together and the ultimate online existence. With newspapers doing surprisingly bad on the market, this option seems rather feasible. The New York Times Company was taken by surprise when it had to announce a $335.000 loss in the first quarter of 2008 (Pérez-Peña, 2008).
According to Pérez-Peña, of the New York Times, “the industry suffers the twin blows of an economic downturn and the continuing long-term shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet”. The first quarter of 2008 was “one of the worst periods the company and the newspaper industry have seen” – Pérez-Peña adds (2008).
This “double blow” has also been felt by the Time, Inc. as the publishing giant had to make a decision of dropping its LIFE magazine in March 2007 due to financial problems (TimeWarner Newsroom, 2007). Instead of falling into an abyss of non-existence, the title, however, continues to live online. The Web edition is up and running, with the homepage currently (June 2008) being rebuilt.
Do you think it will ever be possible that print news will shift entirely online? What about the relaxing experience of opening a broadsheet or a magazine in a cosy café and skimming through the headlines while sipping a coffee?
