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What will come after web apps and social sites?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#11

Post by Caligula »

nostrademons wrote: post #6

Energy. Biofuels will continue to remain hot until people realize what a terrible idea they are. Then I'd bet on photovoltaics and advanced battery technologies. Oh, you meant in software? ;-) I think that VOIP/videoconferencing/telecommuting software will get even huger than it is now, along with better social software to manage these interactions. There're three main drivers for this: 1.) The cost of bandwidth cont…

I would disagree with #2. Gas prices have little effect on commuting. The gas prices have not had a major effect on consumption. The larger factor is traffic in large metropolitan areas. Driving an hour each way is far more detrimental than an extra 5$.

Biofuels have their place. They are not the magical pill that will wean America of middle eastern oil but they surely have their respectable percentage over time.

Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#12

Post by ph0rque »

sanj wrote: post #8
ph0rque wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but a combination of search and location will beat just search any day.

Only when location it is relevant. I'd hazard that 95% of the time that I search, I don't care about location. Pretty much everyone will ship to where I am. Here's the thing: I believe that location-based apps are more about pushing local ads to users than they are about providing services. While that remains the case, they will be a nonstarter.

True, but there's a blurry line between local ads pushed on users and local services provided to users.

Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#13

Post by sanj »

ph0rque wrote: post #12
sanj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only when location it is relevant. I'd hazard that 95% of the time that I search, I don't care about location. Pretty much everyone will ship to where I am. Here's the thing: I believe that location-based apps are more about pushing local ads to users than they are about providing services. While that remains the case, they will be a nonstarter.

True, but there's a blurry line between local ads pushed on users and local services provided to users.

It only seems blurry when you're pushing ads; I think that users find it pretty clear.

I'd suggest that an example for "non-ad services" is CraigsList.

Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#14

Post by davidw »

I'm hoping for mobiles myself. If the Hecl language were to do moderately well, that would be a nice thing for me. It was well received at OSCON, where I gave a presentation on it.

One of the reasons that I think that mobiles will do well is that I think there are a huge number of untapped possibilities out there as phones keep getting faster and better connected. We're all walking around with computers in our pockets and we don't use them at all, currently.

Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#15

Post by bcater »

Someone is going to change the model of how we interact with computers. Keyboards are good, mice are good, big plasma screens are really good, but what's next? Is there a faster or more efficient or more enjoyable way to interact with computers? Do computers have to be boxy? Do monitors have to be rectangular? Unless we have reached the pinnacle of "consumer input/output devices," startups will eventually write the applications that take advantage of the new model - that is, if it's not startups that design the model.

Re: What will come after web apps and social sites?

#18

Post by samson »

palish wrote: post #16

Passive applications (RescueTime, Di.FM, targeted advertising are examples).

I also agree. I think passive applications will start to take more of a role in making things easier for users without them having to constantly tell the technology what to do.

Web 2.0 seems to me like we have taken one step backwards with regard technological innovation. There's nothing inherently advanced about tagging (which seems to be one of the corner stone features of web 2.0), to me it's a thing that could have been done in the 1980's (if not 70's). All thats been done recently is we figured that computers on their own cannot do all that we expect it to.

Unfortunately I think in figuring this out we have gone a little too much on the extreme end of things. Users are now at the point where they constantly have to tag EVERY SINGLE THING to find it.

But this is not a complete bashing of the way the web is now, perhaps we needed to take that one step backward, before we can now move several steps forward.

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