The Next Big Thing

- half of 90's: directories (Yahoo!)
- end of 90's: portals
- beginning of 2000's: search engines (Google) / blogs
- half of 2000's: social networking and bookmarking (MySpace, digg, ...)
- TOMORROW: ?????

So what do YOU think will be the Next Big Thing? Maybe we can come up with a few cool ideas - and if we have the will, implement them!

BYW, I really don't have a clue!!!

Cheers!

 

I don't know about the next big thing, but I reckon RSS web feeds are really going to kick off, especially when the masses adopt IE7. I suppose we won't have to go looking for websites anymore, based on our browsing habits, Google & Co. will deliver what we want right to our desktops.

 

People will always want to go out looking for what else is out there though.

 

RSS has been around since 1999 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) ], same thing for web services.

In any case I am talking about new services to users, not how to deliver it: Google uses HTML for its pages (also RSS, I know, but this is not the point) - but they "invented" a new search algorithm that was a revolution for the web.

What are we going to invent tomorrow?

 

In my opinion the next thing will definitely be video related. youtube and google video are already huge. The new macbooks have video cameras built into the screens and more and more people are making home videos for the net.

 

I believe the next big thing is "Search Big Daddy" search portals. Just look at their rankings over the past three months, they have sky rocketed.

You actually get paid PPC dollars by putting your own search box on your website, every time someone uses it or you use it (which your encouraged to do) you get paid PPC dollars.

So your saying what’s the big deal with the PPC dollars, well you can use them towards your own advertising campaigns and to buy top keywords.

So your saying to yourself, what good do top keywords do me?

Well lets go back to the early days of domain names, if, back then you had bought some great 3 or 4 letter domain names they would probably be worth a lot of money right now!

Well if you really look at what "Search Big Daddy" is doing, they are giving early birds the first opportunity to grab all the best keywords. And for the people that have already signed up for their FREE account (get $50 in PPC when you sign up) they have started to buy the top keywords from the PPC dollars that are accumulating in their accounts.

Here are some top keywords that have already gone, Cars has been snapped up by ebay motors, Travel has been snapped up by Travelocity, Clothing owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. So you see where this is going. If the big guys are signing up then you should be too, before its too late. Look where Google was 10 years ago and where it is now.

Here is a little secret. I signed up only 1 month ago, I have nearly 300 top keywords that I own, more than 30 Top positions that give me a large banner area across the top of the results page when a search is done with my top word. And, I still have more than $40,000 in PPC dollars that I can buy more top positions with. My account just keeps getting bigger and I don’t really have to do anything other than have a search box on my site.

So, these are my thoughts for “The Next Big Thing”

If you want to learn more then visit the forum In the signature line below.

Good luck!!!

 

How can we predict which products will diffuse and which will die, what styles will be in fashion and what styles will be here today (if that long) and gone tomorrow?

 

Jerad,

nobody can predict anything, "things change". Pick a niche market then do some keyword searches on your particular niche to see what words are available. Every second of every day someone is doing a search on the web by typing a word. Just find some common words and your set. You will get ranked #1 in the search results of SBD if you own the top word.

Right now it is easy to get the number 1 position because SBD is new, but once it takes off people will be looking back and saying "woulda, shoulda, coulda" LOL

 

I know you're trying really hard to promote this search engine but getting in early really isn't that big a deal. If someone has better content and is good at SEO then they'll replace your position easily. Unless the search listings are rigged in which case no one will use it.

 

Raisin,

It makes "absolutly no difference" if someone has better content if you own the top keyword. You WILL come up at the top of the search results "Guaranteed".

If you have not looked at the search engine to see what I mean, then try it for yourself. Try searching for a common word. Try this, go to my forum and do a search for, marketing, travel, used cars, hotels, las vegas. these words and phrases are taken and the people that own those words will have their framed site come up on top every single time, guaranteed.

 

I think we are losing a bit focus here...

What this thread is about is what do you think the next succesful
- idea
- business model
- marketing model
will be.

runnerunner is saying it will be video related. Well I think video could be a hit in the next months and years - but how do you "use" videos? How do you make money out of them? Just offer a place to host them? Ops, that's called YouTube...

Chippie, I visited SBD and I find it really difficult to navigate (bad bad thing) - and apart from this why in the world should I pay money for a keyword there when I can spend my money with better results, for example, on AdWords?!?


I mean, creating niche websites and hoping to get a few bucks from Google is ok - but I think there could be much more for our online business!

 

Hi picouli,

Did you visit the Search Big Daddy search engine or the forum? There really isn't any navigating to do on the SBD search engine, there is basicaly a search box, that it. The forum is a forum.

As far as you spending money, it is free to sign up, you get $50 ppc credits given to you and the first top keyword position is given to you also. After that you spend your ppc credits (No Cash at all) Adwords cost you cash.

 

I agree with picouli on both the facts that this thread is being hijacked and that SBD is a poorly designed SE.

Getting back on topic...

I think that video sites like youtube are already a big thing but haven't hit their peak yet. I think Myspace has already hit its peak the question now is whether it will stay there or get eclipsed by the next big thing.

 

The MySpace concept has been around for years (gosh, it's a poorly coded and designed Geocities!), I'm still wondering why in the world it's experiencing all this success (I have a few ideas, but they'r OT)

Anyway, about video I'm pretty sure that there is a better use of them than what YouTube (and Google video and ... and ...) is currently doing - but there is a major drawback to videos as the next Big Thing: it's a costly (in terms of hardware and bandwith) business to run, I believe!

Ok, to helo focusing better, I think a useful exercise is to look for OLDER Big Things and see what they had in common - this way it could be easier to see what the next one(s) will be.

So, this is my (initial) list:
- half of 90's: directories (Yahoo!)
The Internet was small, you didn't really know what to do with it: directories (human edited) were a "tourist guide" of cyberspace

- end of 90's: portals
people were getting more and more online and started to do a lot of stuff online (reading news, sending SMSs, using the email) and so they needed a place where they could do this all at once

- beginning of 2000's: search engines (Google)
the Net grew out of "control" and the problem was that there was TOO MUCH content - Google helped rank this content so that you could get only the "best" and most relevant one

- half of 2000's: social networking and bookmarking
more and more people look for friends on the Internet (let leave on the side all the social and psychological implications of this...) - and trust them more than the ones they meet offline

Well, the only pattern I see from this list is: the Big Thing was always the quickest answer to the users' problems or desires.

So the next question is: what are today's users' problems and desires?

 

The amazing thing about Myspace is that it really is a lot like Geocities. But instead of focusing on website creation they "borrowed" the idea behind friendster and pushed the social networking angle. The fact that it's just all one big cluster fck of a website makes it hilarious. It means theres room for some other company to come out with their own better designed myspace clone and maybe combine it with the portal concept.

 

"better designed myspace clone" - I think MySpace is having all this success *because* of its poor design: unexperienced Internet users find it easy to use (how many people outside of this forum and of a very restricted cirlce have heard of "Web 2.0"?!?) and spammers find it easy to exploit - and the only ones who are making big bucks are the owners.

We can say that MySpace is the example (BTW I agree with your idea that it has already peaked) of the website "for the masses" that succeeds *because* of its lack of features and it's "Web 0.1" look.

The cool thing to discover would be: how and why MySpace had this huge success and all of the thousands (sometimes much better) competitors just died along the way. Also from this answer we could learn a lot about the future...

 

By better design I wasn't speaking about user created designs. Right now as far as I know myspace doesn't have any type of built in template designer. People just cut and paste different code into a box and the result is all the crappy myspace pages. Maybe that's part of the appeal, people can feel like they're the ones creating the page instead of some machine. I can remember doing that with angelfire and geocities. I cut and pasted things before I ever learned to write it myself.

But I do think there's room for improvement without losing that simplicity and that's what I mean by better design. Like you said "spammers find it easy to exploit" a better designed myspace would address this. In my opinion spammers will be the downfall of myspace. Nobody is going to visit some site where half the profiles are fake and everyones trying to sell you something.

 

I think dating sites may take off. It's the next logical step from social networking. Now that it is possible to see every uninteresting part of persons life in vivid words, picture and video there is no reason to be afraid or suspicous of their motives.

 

Chippie,

You are right. The WWW is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down.

 

The next big thing on the internet probably won't involve solely computers. We'll probably see more sites catering to other devices and gadgets.