The next big thing: reclaiming the 'Net back

And yet as fast as they collapse, new startup ideas emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old, hoping to succeed where the last one failed - or replicate the successes of those who've gone before. There appears no shortage of new ideas to throw against the Web 2.0 wall, in the hope that their offering becomes the next big thing. It was Albert Einstein who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results (think particularly of all the search engine clones and wannabees out there, today).

Answer

So what could the next big thing possibly be, and what could it look like? The short answer is: I don't have a clue. My guess is as good as anybody else's right now; however, I see signals and trends in the market that indicate the next big transformative event on the web will almost certainly be the one where ordinary users gain the power and the tools to reclaim personal spaces on the ‘net and mobile, away from the eyes of corporates, advertisers, marketers, big business, and possibly even governments.

Quite what the form of this new product or service will take, I have no idea. However, as Google transformed the ‘Net by creating relative order out of chaos through a search proposition, so I believe the next big thing will capitalize on a nascent sentiment amongst ordinary people, who are tired of their every action on the web being viewed as an opportunity for commercialisation and commoditisation.

Quite simply, ordinary people are tired of having their most private and personal online experiences intruded upon by those trying to beguile them, at every click, into buying yet more stuff. We see the seeds of this trend, already sown; so far, its clearest expression is to be found in the outright rejection of Beacon, by the Facebook community - and Facebook's embarrassing climbdown.

Message

The message from users is clear: “If you want to give us great, free tools, that's fine, but don't turn around when you're successful and try and squeeze money from me.”

Let me be clear that I am not against commercial undertakings on the web; nevertheless, if commercial propositions do not respect surfers' personal spaces, it will have consequences as surfers retreat behind protective walls in a bid to protect what is valuable, namely their privacy, personal information and relationships.

Browsers are slowly getting to grips with the idea that their personal information has great value, both from a commercial point of view and in the broader privacy sense. Linked to this is the explosion of interest from advertisers and marketers in new technologies and methods of gaining access to this for commercial benefit, and the implications it may have on their lives.

Much of our social and business interaction has migrated online, and yet web architecture has by and large not changed since the 1990s and contains some serious security flaws. With the web as an extension of our lives, people want to rely on it as more than a source of information, and the desire is there for ordinary folk to port more, not less, of their digital lives to the 'Net.

Nascent form

Even though a coherent product or service that addresses this need is, I believe, still some years away, it possibly exists in a nascent form, in OpenID (yes, I know OpenID is clunky and doesn't work that well, but hey, Netscape 1.0 is hardly Firefox, is it now?). And Google's announcement that it has joined the likes of Yahoo! and adopted OpenID will give even more impetus to what has up till now been a great concept, poorly implemented.

And so I foresee an enormous opportunity and future for a product or service that embraces the way ordinary folks want to engage with the 'Net, beyond the usual confines of exchanging digital certificates, encrypted passwords and so on.

The time is ripe for a transformative and disruptive service such as this. Just look at how Google started. Just look at Google. What began as an esoteric algorithm by two brainy students changed the way ordinary people engaged the 'Net, by making it easy for us to find stuff (and in the process built a vast business empire).

So I believe that all it will take is a couple of very bright minds imagine a new, all-encompassing way of allowing ordinary people to reclaim digital spaces, in a way that makes it is easy as pie to surf the 'Net.

This will truly change the way people engage with online and I, for one, will be pleased that at least a few “brainiacs” will take a break, from the seemingly endless cycle of producing Web 2.0 wannabees, by doing the same thing over and over again, with the expectation of getting different results.