i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

This interesting debate published this past August on Wired.com proclaims that the web, as a business phenomena, may have reached its limits. The internet is now moving from the browser sphere to the application sphere. Why? We haven't been able to find a viable business model for content. It has delivered huge benefits to media and advertising companies, but the services provided to the users could be improved. As a result, tons of cheaply content has been produced. Now more than ever, mobile applications are becoming popular because they offer people what they need in a better format. O'Reilly says "it’s easy to focus on the apps themselves, down on the phone, and to forget just how many of the key apps are the same networked apps that we see on the web, just with a different front end". 

In my opinion, the assumptions used in that article are just wrong. When we watch video on the youtube website, aren't we using the web? Is the facebook mobile application a compliment for its browser version? Do we really think it could work stand-alone? Are youtube, facebook or google destroying the web? I think they are helping to build it. Plus, there are a billion things we can use the web for, it's just we haven't explored them all. I agree with the statement that the web (as a front-end) and the internet (as a back-end) are two very different things, but I do not see the web dying in a near future.

Sounds familiar: Video killed the radio star