The Future of the Internet

It's been awhile now since the dawning of the commercial internet and World Wide Web with the newly-formed WWW Consortium (W3C) and the availability to purchase domains by the public. It's been quite a ride for some and a yawn for others, but one thing is for certain: the internet has changed the world forever.

For starters, more people in the US are using broadband access as opposed to a dial-up connection providing many times the download speed. From news to sports to business and online shopping, internet users find it difficult to remember the days of plain text and waiting for sometimes hours to download pictures, videos, music and other media-rich content. Today the use of such interactive content is main-stream and provides infinite more utility to the internet than a decade ago.

It was recently reported that Instant Messaging is used more often than e-mail by more than 50% of adult Americans, and among the younger set, that number jumps to over 62%. Instant messaging has become a routine activity from college campuses to corporations, integrating simple text and multi-media with PCs and even cell phones.

This year also marks the first point in history that more people turn to the internet to search for businesses and shopping than they do to the printed material we have traditionally kept in the kitchen drawer under the telephone, and over 60% of US households in a recent survey said they research the internet before shopping locally for products and services. Relevancy, accuracy, variety, and rich content have made the internet an integral part of our daily lives. Who would have guessed so much as recently as 10 years ago?

So what will the future bring? Here are some predictions based on a variety of industry watchdogs and experts: