Overall

There are over 1.9 billion people Internet users around the World which equates to 5 million terabytes of data on the Internet (one terabyte is roughly 333,333 songs) and even though Google has indexed 200TB of that data it still only equates to 0.004% of the total size.

Facebook

Facebook uses 60,000 servers to keep the sites’ 500 Million active users poking, updating and posting with limited interruption. The population of Facebook is way above that of the USA and if it was a country would sit only behind China and India and it stands to reason that it would keep growing and growing.

YouTube
The figure head of the Web2.0 revolution was arguably YouTube and it is still mind-bogglinly popular today, it can maybe even be blamed for the rise of Justin Bieber as one of his songs attracted 344, 194, 152 views. Every minute of every day sees 24 hours of video uploaded and over 2 billion videos are viewed on the daily. If you view these figures as full-length films it equates to 60, 000 being uploaded every week.

Twitter
Despite being the new kid on the block, Twitter still has over 106 million users and those users send 55 million tweets per day. This means that on average, 640 tweets are sent every second – that’s a lot of inspirtaional quotes and lunch break updates.

The future

The Internet is has undoubtedly changed the way we learn, love, rest and play for ever and it will continue to do that.

Relationships
One out of every five couples, and three in five gay couple meet online – this is counteracted somewhat by reports that one in five divorces are blamed on Facebook!

Education
In 2009, a US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.

Getting a job
80% of companies use social media for recruitment, of which 95% of those use Linkedin.

Obviously Facebook will be at risk here but if you look past the features that, if we are being honest, appear in every social networking service known to man. Is Facebook really the main target here? Perhaps the most intriguing aspects or Google+ are the huddle and hang-out functionality. Huddle allows a sms free text conversation between groups of people and the hangout functionality enables a group of people to video chat at the same time. This will obviously be of great concern to Skype who not so long ago were acquired by Google’s biggest rivals Microsoft in a staggering $8.5m deal. The difference with Google+ is that it will allow people to stay in touch even if they don’t have cameras, microphones or a sufficient broadband connection available (on the move, developing countries etc.). If people can use one service in different scenarios it stands to reason that it will have a large uptake.

For what it’s worth, I think Google+ could take a big chunk out of Facebook’s market share, and if they were being honest they would love to do that as advertisers begin to dabble with advertising on social media sites. They just may do it to as it will have been engineered with the social aspect in mind, Facebook has had to adapt over the years and as a result, to my mind at least, is a clunky website with poor privacy handling – I bet they would do things differently given a clean slate. The problem with Google though, is that they are masters at generating hype but are prone to deliver products that are although technically brilliant are confusing to the average user (My view on Buzz). Time will tell and I can’t wait to see what happens….

Oh and wait until Google allows you to search real conversations (you heard it here first!).

Update (02/07011): With absolutely impeccible timing, Facebook and Skype have announced an interesting partnership that sort of undermines the whole article. Facebook will now allow video chat using skype, so now Google will be a bit miffed – keeping up?

The Scarborough Open Air Theatre needed a high-speed Internet connection in a very short time-frame, as Elton John and his production team needed high-speed internet access and a dedicated IP telephony service to ensure the show, and the logistics behind it all, ran like clockwork. Due to the time frame involved the option of digging up roads to install fibre was a ‘no-go’ so Save9 and NYnet were approached to come up with a solution. Based on previous project experience in supplying high-speed Internet access to businesses, without the civil-engineering headaches, we opted for WiMAX technology (see customer case study):

WiMAX & Wi-Fi: Crown Spa Hotel case study

We basically fire our NYnet fibre Internet connection, using radio data links, from the Woodend Creative Workspace building to a receiver on top of the Crown Spa Hotel, which we have a clear line of sight to. In turn we thought it may be possible to send this signal up the coast to the Scarborough Open Air Theatre that is 1.2 miles away from the Crown Spa Hotel. All we needed was a direct line of sight. After many hair-raising climbs to the top of many of Scarborough’s tallest buildings we were surprised to discover that we had a direct line of site all along (thanks to Google Maps and a pair of binoculars)!

We set about making arrangements and just days before Elton was due to arrive for his show; the relevant antenna radios were installed, the Save9 support team worked through the night until finally, at 1am in the morning, successful connectivity was achieved – reaching speeds of 50Mbps through the air.

The run-up to the show and the show itself went off without a hitch and the Save9 WiMAX network now crosses the whole town – linking the South Bay to the North Bay.

Elton John at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre

The event is organised by the Internet Society – with the aim to try and motivate ISPs, telecoms manufacturers and web companies to prepare their internet services for IPv6.

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the successor to IPv4, the Internet addressing protocol which has been used for many years since the very early days of the Internet. The current IPv4 address space only contains 4.3 billion addresses and they are increasingly being rationed. Put simply; the internet will soon run out of capacity to cater for the increasing volume of devices, clients and servers that need to get online.

If you run a website, and want to take part, you will need to verify that your website hosting provider offers IPv6 (of course – Save9 can help you if they don’t) and we can enable the test for you. You will need to be able to configure what are known as ‘Quad A records’ in your DNS zone to enable people to find you by the new internet protocol – IPv6.

For more information on ‘future-proofing’ (a term we are usually hesitant to use – but quite appropriate here) your web server for the next internet protocol version then please get in touch by contacting Steve Bromham at Save9 on 0845 0299999.

Emerging super powers and developing nations drive innovation
This is pretty hard to validate either way but logic reasons that this will happen very soon if it hasn’t already. We have seen a large increase in places like China where Internet usage grew by around 73.3 million people in 2010.

Location based social networks
The emergence of sites such foursquare and Gowalla made a big impact towards the end of 2010. Twitter have also added locations to your Tweets so it looks like location based Social Networking is here to stay.

Real-time search
A hit on this one as Google introduces real time search for news and social network updates in 2010. It probably hasn’t made as big of an impact as I thought it would have but it will become more prominent as the year continues.

Magazine and Newspaper Apps
iPad anyone? They have the platform but the jury is still out for me on whether they have the pricing mechanisms in place……we shall see.

Someone…somewhere…will find an effective use for Google Wave
OK, I got this one gloriously wrong but I do still think it had its uses. One of the many failures that Google seemingly aren’t afraid to make, the plug was pulled on further development in August, just four months after its launch. The product wasn’t well defined, ahead of its time? Who knows?

(TechNewsDaily, 19/04/2010)

The release of code, begun last year, continues with the delivery of the fundamental basis of SEP sesam and is now available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Users now have the added security that they will always have access to their valuable information.

Government IT disaster recovery specialists and military backup software developers in particular will be attracted to the SEP sesam open source model as they will have full access to the underlying code.

SEP is delivering the engine of its Backup and Recovery software, SEP sesam. Thus providing the most powerful backup solution available today without cost, including the valued multi-streaming, multiplexing technology (SMS) to the GPL libraries. SMS along with the SEP Transfer Protocol for Data (STPD) controls the entire flow of data from the SEP client (already available under GPL) assuring rapid, accurate and reliable transfer to the backup medium (disk or tape, SAN, etc.). This important release allows the open source community direct access to critical algorithms and methodology used to store data. Data thus recorded can be converted to source code and be backed up to media for eventual archiving.

“The law in Europe stipulates that all businesses and institutions have the ability, without a third-party, to recover and read their data,” stated Georg Moosreiner, Chairman of SEP AG. “That is why we are providing the open source community with the source code for our Server/Master Server modules. Basically, the STPD is the brain of the software. Our users now have the added security that their backed up data will always be usable.” Moosreiner continued.

In addition to this, SEP is releasing the API and command line interface to the community. These tools enable the direct access to the STPD server and permit users to develop their own management tools and create their own unique backup environment.

“By opening the source code SEP fulfills the decisive requirement for the integration into the Open Source Solution Stack from the Linux Solutions Group e.V. (LiSoG),” reported Thomas Uhl, Director for LiSoG. “For the first time users have a guaranteed method to develop a robust and complete Enterprise Backup/Recovery solution. This software source code now escrowed for everyone to use, is a huge step toward insuring data availability and integrity for the entire community”.

Contact Save9 for info on obtaining the SPE sesam source code libraries.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords was launched in 2000 and allowed any person or business to access a new advertising space. By creating a self-service advertisement platform companies could target their customers very precisely and tweak and update adverts as and when they see fit along with an easy way to manage their advertising expenditure to boot.

Files sharing copy written materials

This issue seems to be as old as the Internet itself but Napster was sued in December 1999 by the RIAA for technically allowing the transfer of copy written material between its users and it shut down in July 2001.

In the years following many file sharing sites have gone a similar way, one of the most controversial being The Pirate Bay. The servers that run the site have been raided and in recent months, former owners have appeared in court and told to remove links, even though they no longer own the site after selling it in 2006. Prior to this the owners were found guilty of breaking copyright law and given a prison sentence along with a hefty fine. The site however has gathered much support and now a political party named after the site is the third-largest in Sweden.

Blogger Fired

Heather Armstrong was working as a Web designer in Los Angeles when she started writing about her company and co-workers in her blog, Dooce.com. When discovered by her bosses she was fired in 2002, possibly the first person to be fired for blogging.

You would think that people would learn from the mistake made by one person, but apparently not.

The Great Firewall of China

Many countries have been accused of censoring Internet content, the latest being Australia. However, it is China who have perhaps been the most notorious with Barack Obama openly criticising the so called “Great Firewall of China”.

Much of the censorship was uncovered around the time of the 2008 Summer Olympics and banned content includes news sources that include articles about police brutality and freedom of speech. The political and cultural debates are, as you would expect, for too vast to go into here but there is plenty of information on the subject and I would urge you to find out more:

• BBC Article
• greatfirewallofchina.org
• Wiki Article

Google Street View

Google Street View allows users to see a 360 degree photo of streets and they can navigate along them within the Google Maps functionality – but this caused worries over privacy.

In order to collect the images various cars with mounted cameras were driven around taking pictures, I even saw one in Scarborough! Within just two days it was alleged that many shady goings on were captured (not in Scarborough I must add) including “pedestrians picking their noses, police attending a fatality, a man climbing into an apartment block and a possible drug deal”.

Google tried to subdue concerns by explaining they have made it easy to flag inappropriate content and stated that they approached organisation such as drug treatment facilities and shelters before taking the images.

It must be noted that Google can remove or edit images though – as detailed in this article. Can’t think why though

Net Neutrality debate

Again another issue that we haven’t got the opportunity to go fully into here but Net Neutrality basically “prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination”.

It will affect everyday users as ISPs could effectively give preferential treatment to one website or service over another. For instance, people who regularly use bandwidth hungry websites such as YouTube could suffer as their bandwidth is reduced to service other customers. This ability to restrict traffic could also arguably hit competition as ISPs limit sites and services offered by competitors in order to promote their own.

For more information please visit – savetheinternet.com

Rage Against The Machine score Christmas number one

Social media prevails! Fed-up with X Factor’s dominance in the Christmas charts Rage Factor was set-up in order to get Rage Against The Machine’s track “Killing in the name of” to the top-spot at Christmas. On one level it was refreshing to see a genuine race for the top spot and see some original and controversial music prevail but I think it does much more than that. Various Social Media campaigns were set-up, firstly Facebook and then Twitter where people campaigned tirelessly and ultimately made it happen. It shows that the Web is truly staring to take on traditional media. Also don’t forget it was the first download-only number one…..hopefully the CD isn’t dead.

Google Books indexes copy written material

Sure as eggs is eggs every time a new medium starts to take off copyright rears its head as Google found out when it tied to index books and publications that were still under copyright. In 2005 a group of publishers and authors , including giants such as Penguin, tried to sue Google. Finally an agreement was reached that allows out of print books to be accessed digitally through Google or selected universities and libraries.

Facebook change Privacy Policy

For those of us who view such sites with suspicion and understand the damage they can do it was interesting to learn that early in 2009 Facebook updated their “Terms of Service”. The Terms of Service effectively allowed them to retain any content posted by users and ultimately claim ownership of it once it was posted – even if the account and content was deleted. After an outcry from their users, Facebook elected to revert back to their original Terms of Service but they have started to face fresh criticism. They are facing allegations of tricking users into sharing information with the wider web and search engines.

Iran and Twitter

There are more and more examples of social media sites such as Twitter enabling people to promote or change issues they feel strongly about. The internet users of Iran turned to the likes of Twitter to organise themselves and gather support for their views after the 2009 election.

The campaign reached beyond their supporters and moved into mainstream media all over the world – promoting the US Government to ask Twitter to put off a system upgrade to keep the service running.

In summary then it has been an interesting decade with plenty of talking points. As the Internet comes more and more into our everyday lives privacy and freedom of speech will continue to play a major role.

Oh and you can bank on Google to be at the centre of more storms in the next decade.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Save9!

Emerging super powers and developing nations drive innovation

Due to the rise of mobile technology people in areas that have not been able to get connected now can. For example the growth on Internet usage in Africa over the last decade has grown by over 1, 300%. All the new users have new needs and most exciting of all new ideas. Speaking at a recent conference, Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales said that the new cultures, languages and ideas would “mix and match in amazing ways.”

Location based social networks

We have seen many location based applications emerge on the iPhone and established ‘Web 2.0′ sites include location based services – for example GeoTagging on Flickr. The beauty of the Internet is that anyone can contribute to any topic but that inevitably means a lot of information that isn’t relevant to a user at a moment in time. Give information a contextual quality, such as a location, means that relevant information should be easier to find and crucially more useful to the user.

As the decade progresses it is thought that this will emerge into a big industry, APIs such as those provided by Google for Google Maps and sites that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with open APIs, such as Trip Advisor enable useful applications and websites to be created.

Real-time search

It could be argued that this has started to progress and take off quite nicely, but it hasn’t quite entered everyday public use. As touched on in a previous blog post, real time search will help provide more relevant search result for users.

Magazine and Newspaper Apps

This topic has also been covered in a previous blog post but I believe we will see a lot more of these in the coming year. They have the ability to provide people with what they want, when they want it and most importantly it gives newspapers and magazines an opportunity to make money.

Someone…somewhere…will find an effective use for Google Wave

Google Wave has many detractors but as it rolls out to more and more users I think people will find it a useful tool, and that’s the point, it is a tool, it will not replace email (at least I hope not)!

Talking of finding a use we have a few ideas so watch this space.

So there you have it, we will check back in twelve months to see what happens!

I will leave you with a few other predictions from my colleagues:

• Simon predicts that the move to ban Google Analytics in Germany will fail
• Steve predicts that cloud computing will take off in a big way

The problems with charging for online content have been debated numerous times and it boils down to this:

News stories are just that :- news. They aren’t owned by anyone and the fact that the BBC report news on their website (that, as license fee payers, we already pay for) means that people can always get news without paying extra.

What about specialist news I hear you shout! Again same problem, news is out there and there will always be someone who will offer it for free or write their own version and post it. How about a group of friends clubbing together and accessing the content with a shared username and passwords?

But it could work

The Internet is successful because it gives people a voice. Anyone can post content and that is never going to change. The sooner online newspapers and magazines can accept that and think of ways they can truly differentiate themselves is the time they can start to make money.

Charge to search and access archives

It’s the data and libraries of information that holds the key for these companies. Don’t charge for accessing up to the minute news information on your website, there is no point. Charge to access old articles and information and maybe even charge on per a search basis. Only major news websites will have the capacity to do this, and the fact that the information cannot be cross-checked and supplemented by what users hear on TV and Radio means they have a greater need to go to a respected source.

Micropayments

The article linked above states that Johnson Press are charging £5 for a three-month subscription. That price is enough for users to think twice when parting with the fee and each user is charged the same regardless of how often the service is used.

A new pricing model may be that of Micropayments. If a user is charged, for the sake of argument, 1p every time they read a news article they will not think twice about parting with that sum of money. The issue of micropayments have been around for a while so if you fancy a little bed-time reading then these links may be of use:

The Case For Micropayments
The Case Against Micropayments

Life beyond the browser
As many sites offer current news stories, as discussed previously, there is little point for charging for the data – on the browser. What about other devices?

Mobile has grown in a big way this year and the massive success of the iPhone means that users can be permanently connected. Online newspapers and magazines could charge for current content as they provide it to the user when they are not at their PC or laptop, by charging for apps. Again the key here is to offer something different, for example a searchable archive.

Many companies online struggle to create revenue, with Twitter being the high-profile case, but it should be possible with a shift in thinking.