Good article on how technology firms are on the brink of innovations that will transform our personal and professional lives.
As technology redefines and remaps our world virtually, the consumer firms driving its development are the new mapmakers. Companies like Facebook are feverishly searching the potential of interaction on the web. So far, that has primarily meant entering text into a search box – dipping into a pool for the fish we know we want. Google, which has a 90% share of the UK search market, has already built a $197bn business on the back of advertising related to those text searches.
So far, so profitable. But the next generation of the web, so Facebook wants us to believe, will be navigated through our social graph, our network of contacts and friends; it will be their recommendations that will prompt us to dip into the water. Though the social web is well established, the business model around it is not. This is the new horizon. And the volume and reach of data produced by Facebook’s users – and the promise of the future of the social web – has investors so excited that they have just valued the company at $50bn. Toffler was on to something.
