Internet 2011: Where Do We Go from Here?

As a web developer I am constantly faced with the pressure to either stay up to date with the current trends in web development, or allow up and coming developers to take my place. There are definitely too many trends for any one person to keep up with, but large entities often employ a small group of employees to make sure they are using the most current methods and most efficient techniques.

Here are three trends that will change the Internet, hopefully for the better.

Innovative Monetization Techniques

For many years there were only three ways to make money off of an Internet property. You could either get paid per click for displaying ads, paid per impression for displaying ads or get a commission for the sale of a product. Recently social marketing has led many companies to start developing more innovative ways to make money off their properties, often allowing their users to get something out of the deal at the same time.

Deal-a-day websites such as Groupon and Living Social offer 50 percent off coupons to users that are supplied by companies who are looking for word of mouth advertising. Twitter famously left investors in the dark about their methods for profiting off of their massive website traffic until they started selling suggested user and hashtag spaces for $100,000. Klout.com ranks users based on their ability to influence other users, and then charges businesses to give those users free samples and free experiences with the hopes they will impress them into some free advertisement.

While I sometimes feel like I'm being manipulated when websites aren't direct about how they are making money off of me, I appreciate the fact that they try to get me something out of the deal as well.

Consumer Usability Studies

How do you interact with web content? This is one of the most important questions a web developer can ask, but a user cannot really give an honest answer. The computers themselves have been able to track your input for years, but companies such as Tobii have revolutionized usability research by allowing researchers to track your eye movement and correlate it to your input.

The user experience and marketing possibilities are innumerable, and it even looks like the Tobii glasses could someday become an integral part of your input system. The system can convert text and symbols into speech. Coupled with a technology such as the Nuance Dragon that can convert speech to input or text, we now have the basis for an input system that communicates bi-directionally without a mouse or keyboard. The Tobii glasses could also eventually rearrange content to make it more useful to individual users.

Integration and Standardization

While every innovation always has its critics, a broad integration and standardization of the Internet has always been championed by the leading technological thinkers. While Mozilla, Opera and Apple are working on integrating HTML 5, social networks are becoming more integrated with every Facebook post that is labeled with a Twitter hash tag. I can log in to Yahoo! and comment with my Facebook account, and it will automatically send the information to Facebook to share the news story with my friends.

These multi-billion dollar companies have always resisted any kind of integration, but as the Internet is becoming more social they are seeing more ways to realize gains by integrating with their competitors. A global Internet community is becoming the first step to world peace, and I believe that without integration and standardization we will never realize the more important goals of global connectivity.