How things have changed (1 of 11)

I’m a bit of an old man.

Well, in “internet years”.

See, I got started in this whole online thing in 1998. If you’ve read my bio, you know that it all started with a magazine article on how to start a website in 20 minutes or less. That article inspired me to create my first website – which looked glorious let me tell you! I mean, those “powered by Netscape” buttons were fantastic, weren’t they?

But, it went from that… to GeoCities… to a little site called “PC Mechanic”… to a real web host and a real domain name… eventually (and surprisingly) to a multi-author six-figure business and to today… running the Blog Marketing Academy.

It’s been a helluva ride. Filled with ups, downs and flatlines.

But, in 20 years, a TON has changed.

I mean, I’ll say upfront right now that… were I to start my original tech/computer site today, it would have flopped. Just too much major media to compete with. Back in the 90’s, my tech site had a great USP (unique selling proposition) and it filled a gap. Today, it would drown in sea of noise.

Back then, we had multiple search engines competing. Remember Excite? AltaVista? Lycos? Dogpile? When Google came along, it was just another one.

Today, Google is synonymous with search. It is a freakin’ verb now and it is actually in the dictionary.

Back then, “social media” was forums and newsgroups. I actually had a pretty sizable tech forum, but there were TONS of these things.

But, then MySpace happened and people thought that was the big thing. FriendFeed. Twitter. The Face Book. Hell, I remember when “the face book” was literally just a listing of faces and dudes would go there to see who was hot.

Today, Facebook is pretty much a social utility. Sure, Twitter is still a thing, but if it weren’t for celebs and our rather unique president, Twitter would be barely a presence today. Facebook IS social.

We could easily go on.

How Amazon has centralized ecommerce to a large degree.

How a large portion of the independent news sites that used to exist separately are now owned by a handful of large corporations.

The keyword here is…

CENTRALIZATION.

Things have radically centralized and now most of the internet content and traffic is controlled by a handful of corporations.

What’s going on with all this?

How should we adjust to it?

And where do I think things are heading?

In the next several issues of The Daily, I’m going to be talking trends. I’m going to be taking the big, overall view of what’s been happening, how it affects those of us with blogs and online businesses today… and where I think things are going.

Sound interesting?

Well, if so… great. I’ll see ya tomorrow.

And if not… well, sorry. I’m doing it anyway.

– David