Technology
Describing the splintering of internet technology, some writers see the problem in terms of new devices using different standards. Users no longer require web browsers to access the Internet, as new hardware tools often come with their own "unique set of standards" for displaying information.[2]Journalist and author Doc Searls, uses the term "splinternet" to describe the "growing distance between the ideals of the Internet and the realities of dysfunctional nationalisms. . . ," which contribute to the various, and sometimes incompatible standards which often make it hard for search engines to use the data. He notes that "it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized." However, as new devices incorporate their own ad networks, format, and technology, many are able to "hide content" from search engines." [3]
Others, including information manager Stephen Lewis, describe the causes primarily in terms of the technology "infrastructure," leading to a "conundrum" whereby the Internet could eventually be carved up into numerous geopolitical entities and borders, much as the physical world is today.[4]
Commercial lock-in
The Atlantic magazine speculates that many of the new "gadgets have a 'hidden agenda' to hold you in their ecosystem." Writer Derek Thomson explains that "in the Splinternet age, ads are more tightly controlled by platform. My old BlackBerry defaulted to Bing search because (network operator) Verizon has a deal with Microsoft. But my new phone that runs Google Android software serves Google ads under apps for programs like Pandora." They rationalize the new standards as possibly a result of companies wishing to increase their revenue through targeted advertising to their own proprietary user base. They add, "This is a new age, where gadgets have a 'hidden agenda' to hold you in their ecosystem of content display and advertising. There are walls going up just as the walls to mobile Internet access are falling down."[5]Forrester Research vice president and author Josh Bernoff also writes that “the unified Web is turning into a Splinternet,” as users of new devices risk leaving a single internet standard. He uses the term "splinternet" to refer to "a web in which content on devices other than PCs, or hidden behind passwords, makes it harder for site developers and marketers to create a unified experience."[6] He points out, for example, that web pages "don't look the same because of the screen size and don't work the same since the iPhone doesn't support Flash." He adds that now, with the explosion of other phone platforms like Google Android, "we'll have yet another incompatible set of devices."[7] However, both Android and iOS are Unix-based platforms, and both offer WebKit-based browsers as standard, as does leading handset manufacturer Nokia.[8]
Politics and nationalism
A survey conducted in 2007 by a number of large universities, found that Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia filter a wide range of topics, and also block a large amount of content related to those topics. South Korea filters and censors one topic: North Korea.It found that numerous countries engaged in "substantial politically-motivated filtering," including Burma, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, and Vietnam. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Tunisia, and Yemen engage in substantial social content filtering, and Burma, China, Iran, Pakistan and South Korea have the most encompassing national security filtering, targeting the websites related to border disputes, separatists, and extremists.[9]
Foreign Policy writer, Evgeny Morozov, questions whether "the internet brings us closer together," and despite its early ideals, that it would "increase understanding, foster tolerance, and ultimately promote worldwide peace," the opposite may be happening.[10] There are more attempts to keep foreign nationals off certain Web properties, for example, digital content available to U.K. citizens via the BBC's iPlayer is "increasingly unavailable to Germans." Norwegians can access 50,000 copyrighted books online for free, but one has to be in Norway to do so.[10] As a result, many governments are actively blocking internet access to its own nationals, creating more of what Morozov calls a "Splinternet":
- Google, Twitter, Facebook -- are U.S. companies that other governments increasingly fear as political agents. Chinese, Cuban, Iranian, and even Turkish politicians are already talking up "information sovereignty" a euphemism for replacing services provided by Western Internet companies with their own more limited but somewhat easier to control products, further splintering the World Wide Web into numerous national Internets. The age of the Splinternet beckons.[10]
Other countries, besides China, also censor internet services: Reporters Without Borders ranks Iran's press situation, for example, as "Very serious", the worst ranking on their five-point scale.[13] Iran's Internet censorship policy is labeled "Pervasive" by the OpenNet Initiative's global Internet filtering map, and the worst in the ranking.[14] In March 2010, they added Turkey and Russia to their ‘under surveillance’ list regarding internet censorship, and warned other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Belarus and Thailand, also "under surveillance" status, to avoid getting transferred into the next "Enemies of the Internet" list.[15]
Religion
Internet access has also been blocked for reasons of religion. In 2007, and again in May 2010, Pakistan blocked the video sharing website Facebook and YouTube, reportedly along with search engine Google, and Wikipedia, to contain what it described as "blasphemous" and "un-Islamic" material.[16][17]The Church of Scientology recommended internet censorship as a method of defending itself against what it said were a constant campaign of abuse by the group "Anonymous," along with misinformation and misrepresentation in the media. In September 2009 it asked the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Freedom of Religion and Belief to restrict access to web sites it believes incites "religious vilification."[18]
Internet or Splinternet?
Some of you may remember that not so long ago there was a time, when all things were simpler. In order to play a console game you had to insert a cartridge and press the start button, without having to endure long loading times, installation, connection to some poor online service, endless firmware upgrades. TV guide was a handy brochure, not a laggy and painfully slow screen. Pink Floyd, Nirvana and Guns’n’Roses were considered the “popular music”. TV was not only about terrible talent shows. Vampire novels meant books by Anne Rice, not “Twilight”. Cars were not smarter than the drivers. And yes, movies were still silly. But it was good kind of silly.
Back then, the Internet was one – a global web, similar regardless of whether you were accessing it from Birmingham, Berlin, Bangladesh or Kickapoo. All of this changed.
I don’t want to be that scruffy guy with “The end is nigh” sign and some really bad dental problems, but most industry analysts already noticed that global Internet is coming apart, changing into a cluster of smaller and more closed webs. They have even created a catchy name for this Web 3.0 – the Splinternet. How is it happening?
First reason is the hardware. In the beginning, most users browsed the Internet from similar desktop machines. Even if the operating system was different, standardized web protocols and languages made the final experience similar, whether you were using Windows 3.1 machine or your trusty classic Mac. But now the pool of devices capable of using Internet is growing rapidly. In fact, various proprietary gadgets will soon overtake the desktops as the most common way of accessing the web. Some of them support flash, some of them don’t. Some of them will adopt HTML5, others don’t plan for it. Many access the altered, ‘mobile’ versions of the sites and apps. Some have very limited processing power, which effectively blocks them from certain web activities. And their manufacturers sometimes block certain parts of the Internet entirely, like Apple fighting porn, or AT&T blocking Skype on their smartphones. Today, the Internet on one device might be different from the Internet on the other. Between mobiles, tablets, desktops, netbooks, internet enabled TV’s, and fridges, the hardware gap is widening.
Even bigger change came with the rise of social networks and various web apps. Every day more content is hidden in the walled gardens of the web, like Facebook or Twitter, behind the fence of login and password. Just think about it: how much interesting content have you discovered in your friend’s updates, notes and tweets? This content is invisible to Google and other search engines, it’s not backed up by wayback machine or proxy servers. The number of people seeing only the things recommended by their social circle is growing.
But that’s not everything. There is also an idea of the adaptive web, Internet that changes depending on your preferences or habits. It was started by location-sensitive websites, forcing you to use the localized version if they find out you’re in a certain country. Then, some sites (like Amazon) learned to keep track of user history – and adapt. Right now, many portals try to push it up one more level, the whole site content is supposed to change based on your preferences. What’s the problem with that? A simple example: imagine you’ve seen a great article on a certain site, you tell your friend about it, but when he goes to the same site, he won’t see it. The site remembered that he’s interested in music and film, not in popular science, and is feeding him only the content he is supposed to like. Adaptive web might close people off in small bubbles of content, blind them to the outside world.
Same goes for ISP-side filtering. I wrote about it recently in my series on net neutrality, but to give you a quick recap: major telecoms are lobbying for the right to filter internet traffic coming to their clients. They want to block certain sites, they want to force you to use their own services (e-mail clients, auction houses, shops), instead of the ones you use right now. Should they succeed, the internet will be torn apart by gaps much wider than everything I mentioned in the previous paragraphs.
Like it or not, the Splinternet age has begun. We have a growing hardware chasm, walled gardens rising left and right, websites that become shape-shifting adapters, ISP’s that filter content, and users gather in closed, social recommendation circles. The web is much different than it was years ago, and many analysts agree that the golden age of Internet is finished.
So how does our StormDriver tie in with all that? Are we a knight in a shining armor, on a quest to defend the old ways? Or are we a part of web 3.0? It’s complicated (as usual). On one hand, we want to bring the interaction back to the common web, and break down the walled garden walls. We want you to be able to interact everywhere, not only in places where admins allow you to. On the other hand, we’re also an adaptive and robust social recommendation circle. Stormdriver will allow you to see the web as recommended by other users. It will be much easier to avoid the really bad sites and content, but on the other hand – it is a garden, even if the walls are knee-high, and you can step over them without login or password.
Because in the end, no one can fight the Splinternet. It’s a paradox – users want the web to become more intelligent and adaptive, but at the same time the single homogenous Internet will shatter. Everyone is soon to have an Internet of their own.
Read the follow-up to this post: Splinternetgate: on web 3.0 and buzzword abuse
From Internet to Splinternet: Marketing Implications
The Internet is evolving into what Forrester Research calls the “Splinternet.” Despite concern some express about "protecting the Internet" from breaking up into private, semi-walled or substantially private domains, that already is happening at a rapid rate. Where once uniform and standardized, "the Web" no longer exists, according to Sharyn Leaver, Forrester Research analyst.Proprietary smartphones, TVs with streaming connections, iPads and Kindles are part of the change. Each device ecosystem is substantially walled off from the rest of the public Internet, offering a curated experience. In addition to that, nations routinely filter, censor and otherwise create national versions of the Internet. Beyond that, there are end-user-created communities of interest around language and culture as well.
There are implications for enterprise information technology executives and policies, Forrester Research said. Enterprises will face a new "Splinternet" age that will likely be chaotic. Though there have been many advantages to an "open" Internet based on standards, in the new age proprietary software and hardware will be important. The Apple iPhone and iPad provide examples.
At least in part as a reaction, rival ecosystems will be created, further "balkanizing" the landscape. Facebook, Android and many online video ecosystems, not to mention various smartphone ecosystems, are examples. The implications for marketing outreach are clear enough: it will become harder to fashion programs that have in the past assumed uniformity of protocols and environments.
In a growing number of cases, user experiences will occur behind log-in walls that create semi-hidden or fully-hidden experiences unavailable to software from outside the walled gardens.
Essentially, the traditional issues of device fragmentation in the mobile handset world will start to replicate more broadly throughout the broader Internet world as well.
Until recently, developers and marketers could assume that all Web experiences were mediated by PCs, with a high degree of standardization. But that increasingly will be challenged as more users access Internet and web services from a variety of somewhat or largely incompatible devices, running proprietary software, said Josh Bernoff and Shar VanBoskirk, Forrester Research analysts. Some devices, such as Kindles, will affect developers and applications because such devices, though supporting Web application access, do so without support for color, for example, and some devices might not support full Web browsing.
Online video services and applications also will further shape the nature of experiences, as most are expected to use proprietary access, widgets or browsers. At the same time, many content providers are putting former Web-accessible content behind paywalls. All of that means a much more difficult management environment for enterprises, and tougher challenges for marketers.
Up to this point, marketers could assume that the Web was open, not subject to control by various gatekeepers. But the number of gatekeepers is growing. Apple controls the iPhone and iPad environemnts. Microsoft controls the XBox ecosystem, while Facebook controls its own ecosystem as well.
As the Web splinters into the new age of the “Splinternet,” companies, not standards bodies, rule interactive elements. The days of standardized web-established links, click-throughs, and analytics are over. CIOs must re-evaluate their current web-based systems and help their CMO counterparts pursue these new incompatible formats to get closer to customers, Forrester Research said.
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