End of the Web as we know it

The days of the World Wide Web are numbered. At the 1997 European Forrester Forum in London last week, George Colony, president of the international research organisation, declared that "the Web is dead". The meeting then heard him demolish a whole range of conventional Internet wisdom.

The bottom line for the Web is that it is not suitable for the serious business of Internet commerce. Surveying a number of prominent company sites, Colony asked, "Who wants to know about a message from the CEO? Who wants to waste several minutes waiting for the crossword to come down the line, even if it is in Java? Who wants to be endlessly welcomed to the company Web site with pretty image files?" Individuals go to business sites for action, not entertainment, and Colony describes the contemporary design of Web pages as "commerce interruptus".

Further, since the suits got in on the game a year or so ago, the Internet has stagnated. The average purchase value per online sale has fallen slightly, from $108.75 in 1996 to $103.50 in 1997. And the range of products being shifted, apart from information technology itself, has stuck with CDs and books and the occasional bunch of flowers. Part of the trouble here is that the typical online store is incomplete and unsatisfying to the site visitor.

This is not to say that the Internet is and will not be hugely significant. US teenagers now spend more time in front of the PC than they spend watching television. Even in the relatively underdeveloped cyberlives of Europeans, 10 per cent of the population goes online at least once a day. There is good news, too, for those who fret about "information haves" and "information have nots": the biggest growth sector for PCs is the lower-to-middle income group, who buy sub-$1,000 machines.

Looking to the future, Forrester believes that shopping over the Internet will be worth $6.5bn by the year 2000, up from $1.1bn predicted for 1997, though this is still low compared to, say, the US catalogue shopping market, which is worth $60bn today. In fact, Forrester believes the Internet will become the fourth delivery channel for goods and services, after face- to-face, postal delivery and the telephone. The question is, which Internet technology will emerge to win the day?

The answer, Forrester believes, is called "Internet computing". And the first wave of its development can be seen with the arrival of "push" technology, software that allows customised information to be sent to individual PCs. The ability to rise above the masses of Web pages all vying for attention will be central if a company is to "stop thrashing and start thriving" in the new business mode. Though Forrester did not refer to it, the announcements last week by BT and BSkyB for set-top boxes - in effect thin client computers for interactive processing of data, in part over telephone lines, like the Internet - could well be a candidate for the second wave of Internet computing.

But Forrester's voice is not typical of the consultants trying to grab the ear of nervous business development managers who want to see the future. For example, much of the hype about the Internet's business potential has focused on the way the technology lowers entry barriers to the market- place. If you are wanting to operate as an online bank, for example, you do not need 200 years of history and 2,000 branches. But, Forrester says, companies must create entry barriers to consolidate market share. Or, again, it is commonly believed that getting into the Internet means getting into direct selling. Not so. Intermediaries will thrive as customers need to be put in contact with suppliers, and suppliers need resellers who know their customers.

Then, it is often said that the Internet will realise the utopian economy with a mass market of one. Wrong. Businesses should encourage virtual communities of people, chatting and e-mailing about their products. "Affordable intimacy" is the name of the game: online groups built around customer loyalty.

For the nostalgic Net-head there may be disquiet over all this. Going and gone are the days when "affordable" meant anyone could get online, and "intimacy" meant that you could find friends on the other side of the world. At this, geeks lamentn