Tim, nice and anything but dim

On an otherwise unremarkable day, April 30th 1993, something happened which changed the world. On that day Tim Berners Lee and his employer, CERN, released the World Wide Web (WWW) from its licensing bonds and set it loose upon the Internet as a free technology. The impact of this was almost immediate, leading to the birth of the web as we know it, albeit in prototype form. I started a career as a web designer the following year, so I owe a lot to Tim and CERN. Looking back over those 15 years it’s obvious the web has changed out of all recognition, and while it is still a publishing medium par excellence (as it was first envisioned), it is now also the nation’s preferred means of distance buying (overtaking mail order), a first-rate research tool and a social networking medium. We can even watch BBC tele on the web (through the Beeb’s iPlayer), we can listen to thousands of radio stations, find the phone number for a local plumber and price comparisons for the telephone service we use to call him.

Aside from these visible changes, there are more subtle evolutions taking place in cyberspace. This is exemplified in particular by the growth of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr et al. These sites have millions of children and adults alike salivating at the potential to get themselves Out There, keep up with friends and ‘meet’ others with similar interests. I read recently in the Guardian newspaper that this is not, strictly, using the web to communicate (as one might by using a newsgroup, web blog or forum), so much as to ‘build relationships’, which made me wonder, considering all the stories you hear, quite who was doing the building and what sort of relationship were they after? This strange language being used by the social networking sector is actually familiar to me from my days with a brand development agency. We used to talk about ‘building relationships’ between brands and consumers – and actually, if you use any of the social networking sites, you will see immediately that all this is actually to do with the advertising. It is the advertisers who want to build relationships with the sites’ users, and the incredible monetary value of these sites is testament to how badly they want to do this and that it works, extremely well.

Marketing and advertising are both leading growth areas on the web, and as ever at the centre of the action, the latest US figures show that for the first time ever US companies spent more money advertising online than they did on print advertising. Considering how young this industry is (although in my thirties I feel a bit like a granddad sometimes) this is a strong indication of where business marketing will be focused over the coming decade. I see this already everyday. For example, small businesses seem to be deserting Yellow pages en masse, in favour of cheaper, more profitable marketing activities on the web. It makes sense for them not just because it is cheaper but because the web is now where most people look when they want to find a supplier, service or business. Indeed I don’t even know where my yellow pages directory is; and, I’m faintly surprised to discover (via a small informal poll I’ve just conducted), neither do any of my friends!

Fosse Way magazine’s “Ask the Expert” column, June 08.