Web was started as a means to facilitate communication and information exchange. In 1994, when launched, it was just html programming code to display text. Web was considered as 'information highway' and we saw start of dotcom boom with rise of e-commerce websites, like Amazon, eBay and email provideres like hotmail. After the dotcom bust, very few websites like Google, eBay, Amazon survived and, with the new technologies like AJAX, XML, RSS, Folksonomies, we see different genre of rich websites like gMail, wikis, Flickr, Youtube, Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bloggers, gMaps, Mash-ups. AJAX and similar technologies made applications provide faster, more seamless web user experience. Applications tend to be characterized by user generating content on web. In November 2006, there were over 8 billion websites online based on variety of interesting concepts targeting users of all ages.
[Reference: 10 Years That Changed the World]Web in 2013:
5 more years and you'll see -
Even if it's just a period of 5 years to 2013, I expect emergence of new web technologies that'll take the web user experience to next stage, and these frameworks will be easy to incorporate for web developers. We'll see more "featured" browsers implementing HTML5 standard. Mash-up technologies will continue to facilitate combination of data from different web sources, and will provide many new interesting and useful features. We'll see many applications being provided by relatively naïve developers. There'll be continued convergence of telecoms, social networking sites, semantic web and composite applications. We have seen recent developments happening on mobile application frameworks, like iphone SDK, Google Android SDK being available for mobile Application developers. There'll be more web applications where in the channel of information source will be cellphones.
With the WiFi web and improved Internet connectivity, we'll see 'always on' social communities, and there will be more applications similar to Twitter. There will be proliferation of different virtual social groups, and we'll see highly virtually socialized generation. Social networking sites will be more expressive. Current issues like privacy, security with social networking sites will remain and but I don't expect any rise of new adverse social and psychological problems like personality disorders or digital xenophobia in just 5 years. Life online will have changed the way we think.
Search engines will be more efficient and personalized and users will be able to get exact information. Web will continue to be an entertainment platform. Technology that govern 3D online digital content will continue to push limits of multimedia for web applications. Online game applications like World of Warcraft, SecondLife will continue to be popular. These applications will redefine the entertainment web applications. E-commerce websites will have more sophisticated recommendation systems making use of semantics and online social networks. Web applications will continue to satisfy human needs and will enhance those.
We have already seen social web and semantic web analysis tools playing important role in politics, and political campaigns. Online voting will have been incorporated. By 2013, we'll see new cyberlaws that will try to resolve issues related to privacy, intellectual property/copyrights. The creative commons will play vital role in the new copyrights control laws. Internet penetration in the world will increase, giving opportunities to consider potential web users from variety of socio-economic status, culture, ethnicity and geographical location.
In summary, web will continue to facilitate our need to connect, exchange, share, compete and network in better way.
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