2007 State of the Internet Address

Huddle around your computer speakers to listen to a bold vision for the Internet in 2007 from the President himself.

Download the MP3

* Hat tip to Portland Oregon based SplashCast for enabling us to create this audio channel in minutes. Thanks guys. Love the new product.

Transcript

Ladies and Gentlemen…Pundits…Bloggers…and Netizens of the Nation…

It is an honor to be here talking to you during such a significant period in the brief history of the Internet. As we gather today, I truly believe we are on the edge of a dot com tipping point. Our progress is a tribute to the hard work and toil of countless online pioneers whose innovation, financial investment and passion has resulted in the dawn of a new era online.

2006 has marked some monumental milestones which have forever changed the Internet landscape:

• A groundswell of innovation and creativity revived the technology economy, producing new jobs and an influx of financial investments in emerging technology.
• The phenomenal success of You Tube ushered in a new era of community driven sites and saw its two founders sell their video site to Google for 1.6 billion dollars.
• YOU were recognized as the Time Magazine person of the year, contributing to a wave of online participation and activism.

Here at ISITE Design, as our interactive agency enters our 10th year of business, we have experienced record growth helping companies find new ways to reach and engage users online.

We can be proud of our achievements this year that many of you helped make possible:

• We doubled in size and expanded our Portland and Boston offices to support new and exciting client work.
• We were humbled by the prestigious Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange with three great honors including a best of show award for our work on the Primal Quest Adventure online experience.
• We developed a viral online campaign site for Farm Aid, tapping into the passion of its fans and the farming community to raise awareness for its annual benefit concert.

While we are all carried by the momentum of our recent achievements, let us not forget those who have scarified to help us reach this majestic plateau. The dot com crash of 2001 remains in our minds… Fueled by irrational exuberance and greed – its rapid rise and fall helped establish the web infrastructure we have today. Without these valiant heroics from folks like the Pets.com sock puppet, Kozmo.com bike messengers and countless miles of dark fiber, we would not have today's tidal wave of innovation changing the way we work and live online and off.

So here we are in 2007 in the dawn of the social web – an era of user generated content, online democracy, and game changing innovations.

While we have made great strides, there is still significant work to be done. The web must be a place where everyone, regardless of bandwidth, browser or device can have enjoyable and triumphant online experiences.

So while individuals from around the world have joined into a global conversation – There are still people being left behind. We need to reach out and offer a helping hand and invite them into this new online world.

There are businesses today struggling to create memorable and engaging online experiences. Businesses that don't know how to best leverage the new ways of this medium. Businesses that don't understand their user's needs and goals and STILL are not using web measurement and data to make informed decisions.

While we have come so far, there is still a long road ahead. A 2006 study revealed that business to business websites have a success rate of just 58% of finding the information they came to the site for. This means that more than 40% of users do NOT accomplish the task they set out to accomplish on the web site. This is not acceptable.

As we enter 2007, I would like to introduce a five pronged platform to help address these problems and help every organization have a more successful website and strategy. I believe that by focusing on these five areas, businesses can establish a strong strategic foundation and achieve and exceed their goals online.

First: Leverage the power of your own communities. Much has been written and said about the power of user generated content. Find ways to let your customers connect, discuss, debate, and critique. Listen to the good and bad and let their passion and frustrations guide you in new directions. Step outside of your public relations and marketing box to develop a true dialogue.

Second: Develop a culture of testing and continuous improvement in all that you do. The web affords a tremendous opportunity to quickly roll out and experiment with new ideas. Use analytics to validate your decisions. Unlock the data inside your organization and empower more people use this information to measure and improve what they do. Stop trying to benchmark against the competition and benchmark against yourself.

Third, I encourage you to create unexpected and different experiences: Our online experiences are being commoditized as companies rush to copy competitors and settle for the status quo. Challenge yourself to think differently and come up with completely new ways of solving problems online.

Fourth: Think beyond the walls of your website. A fundamental shift in 2006 has been the movement toward a distributed web. Content, applications and services are all being distributed and consumed across multiple sites, desktops and devices. Ask yourself how you are fitting into the ecosystem today and how you can take the success on your site and be part of the larger conversation. There is an connected world out there that you must be a part of to thrive..and survive.

Fifth, and Finally: Go Beyond the Buzz. Rise above the hype and flavor of the day to look at what your objectives are and develop a strategy to achieve real results online. Web 2.0, AJAX, Podcasting are all tools and tactics, but they aren't a strategy. The companies that focus on the big picture, while not being afraid of adopting and quickly rolling out new ideas and technologies will continue to win.

While we've come so far, there is a long way to go.

While there is new and exciting technology, there is also chaos in how new tools and standards will be defined.

While there is hope and opportunity for what is possible, there is also trepidation and hesitancy on how to proceed.

We have only scratched the surface on the capacity of what we can accomplish online. Challenge yourself. Challenge Others. And let's raise the bar and create online experiences that are memorable, engaging, unique and successful.

Thank You and Best of Luck in 2007.