What\'s It Mean When Online Traffic is Concentrated to a Handful of Apps?

The Internet is always changing, and anyone who has been using it for a while has experienced this change for themselves. While it might be strange to think about, the latest statistics have proven that the current changes to the Internet are some of the most significant--especially for businesses. “Online business as usual” will be significantly different moving forward.

Forrester issued a report that claims Internet users spend about 85 percent of their time on mobile devices with applications, while about 15 percent is spent in the web browser itself. This shift mainly started around the beginning of 2014. The shift happened when people began accessing the Internet primarily through mobile apps and devices rather than through desktop computers.

In other words, people aren’t spending as much time sitting in front of their desktops, and are instead switching to browsing the Internet on their mobile devices. While this might seem like a good enough reason to shift your online efforts to mobile apps, another claim from Forrester suggests you should do the opposite. This is because people spend 85 percent of their time on mobile devices are using only five apps, including the most popular apps of them all: Facebook and Google.

While Net Neutrality is under fire by legislation influenced by special interests, the suggestion that most of the computing going on is through a small number of applications tends to prove that the freedoms we enjoy online are threatened. The reason: only a handful of companies own these popular mobile apps, which would put all of the power in the hands of a select few, completely changing and controlling the current state of things. Business2Community describes it like this: “This reality on the commercial web is now being revealed as we are witnessing the rise of a duopoly. Google and Facebook. Today 90 percent of all advertising growth on digital is coming from these two companies.”

All of these changes don’t necessarily change the fact that you’ll be able to use the Internet to create your personal or professional image. You’ll still have websites, forums, email, and all of the things that users have seemingly taken for granted. It’s just the fact that nobody will listen to what you have to say without Facebook and Google to send users to your website. It’s also important to take into account that online content isn’t always created specifically for mobile, so if you fail to jump on this bandwagon, you are sure to lose influence as the Internet changes and evolves.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, saw a vision of a utopia where the world was changed for the better by the Internet. He described the web as “an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information, access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries.” Anyone who uses the Internet today probably cannot see what Berners-Lee was talking about.

To a business owner, this continuous change represents a thrilling challenge that you have to overcome in order to succeed. In a way, it’s not so different from any other technology that your business relies on. Technology changes suddenly and unexpectedly, and it’s up to you to ensure that such changes don’t end your business. To learn more about how you can take preventative measures against unexpected changes in your IT infrastructure, reach out to us at (978) 482-2020.