I think Prince was on to something–the Internet is not dead, but everything we think is cool about it will be dead sooner than we think. We are becoming so accustomed to rapid changes in what is technically possible that we pick up and abandon trends faster than ever, making the life expectancy of new products and services shorter and shorter.
- YouTube has been popular for about 5 years
- Most people I know have been on Facebook for three years or less
- Twitter was very 2009.
Apps and internet memes may only last a few months or weeks. Fat Booth or Sad Keanu anyone? For free or for a dollar or two you can download the latest cool thing, share it, like it and forget it. There are so many trends that there’s only enough time to adopt a small percentage of them before they are replaced. The proliferation of mobile technologies is only hastening this effect (in 2010, it’s Grindr and FaceTime on the iPhone).
The Internet itself is not dying, but whatever someone says is cool about it probably is.