Website Development 2.0

Life on the web has changed since our firm's inception in 1997 – ‘living’ on the web has become not only possible, it has become fundamental. To fully illustrate the influence of how the web is transforming the way we connect to others, just follow a typical teenager around for a day. If you have an interest in gauging their (inter)dependence on social networking, take away their rights to their computer. When you do, you will begin to see just how integral these programs have become to their very essence of ‘living’ – in fact, finding a teenager who actually engages others over the phone is a challenge unto itself. Life in business is no different and as we become pressed for time to research and communicate within our own small communities and beyond, this social networking will (and has already begun) to emerge in commercial applications that will see us ‘living’ in new contexts too.

Social networking over the web, for example, is increasing and in June of 2006, MySpace.Com surpassed 50 million visitors for the previous month (comScore media). To understand the magnitude and consequential influence of this figure, the population in Canada was estimated by Stats Canada to be around 32,851,665 in October of 2006. When our online traffic is exceeding current populations of countries, we can no longer assume these activities to be the result of early adoption – this is the changing face of our future. As this next generation enters the workforce over the next few years, the demand for technologies that provide a similar ethnicity grows and the paradigm where we once drove the web is being replaced with the web driving us.

So, what does this mean for issues such as website development? How do we harness the business, technology and the human factors to provide a useful tool that has a reasonable lifecycle? These are definitely questions that require fleshing out as corporations define their goals over even the next 5 year cycle. The challenge for us is to continue to provide technology solutions that add value and ignite projects that fuel our client’s success. The challenge for our clients is to forecast their needs and manage the open communication systems that are enabled by this living environment online.