The Internet makes us smarter, but we also make the Internet smarter. Information flows back and forth. What is emerging is a division of labor where humans do the things we are better at doing and the Internet—as the vast, global, computing resource available to everyone—does the information tasks that it is better at doing.
markets are in turmoil, politicians are making extremely difficult decisions, and people are facing one of the grimmest economic outlooks in a lifetime. One in ten of our labour force faces unemployment; in some countries, as high as one in five.
Meanwhile, we are desperately looking for the magic ingredient to offer us hope. The way to build the economy of the future.
We don’t need to look that far. This magic ingredient is right here in this room: it is in our sector, the sector I’m responsible for, the sector you’re responsible for: it is the Internet, digital technology. ICT.
one of the big reasons why online advertising has done so well is simply the negative one: online micropayments were a disaster, and never took off. But they’re much more compelling as a business model, and there’s a decent chance that at some point in the future the financial system as a whole is going to get its act together and put together something which actually works and which people are happy to adopt. At which point, the online ad industry will face a major threat…
…
advertisers still think that click-through rates mean something, and that a higher click-through rate means a better ad. It’s the measurement fallacy: people tend to think that what they can measure is what they want, just because they can measure it.In fact, with very few exceptions, I’ve never even wanted to look at online ads: its quite astonishing, the degree to which we’ve collectively trained ourselves to ignore ads when we bring up a web page. And what that says to me is that online advertising is missing something really huge.
Finally had a chance to go through this McK report and pull out key stats:
Internet accounts for 3.4% GDP in the 13 countries they looked at (which combined represent 70% of global GDP). If it were a sector, it would be bigger than energy and agriculture. Scaled up to the world (based on internet penetration in remaining countries), McKinsey estimate internet accounted for 2.9% of global GDP ($1,679 billion) in 2009.
Big differences though by country: in 2009 6.3% in Sweden, 5.4% in UK, 4.6% in SK. All the rest below 4%; lowest Russia at 0.8% (see split by country on p15 of report)
2.6 jobs were created for every job lost due to the Internet
In past 15 years, Internet contributed 7% of GDP growth across the 13 countries examined, and up to 10% in mature markets. Over past 5 years figures were 11% of GDP growth across 13 countries and a staggering 21% in mature markets
10% increase in productivity from using the internet for small and medium sized businesses
Small and medium businesses heavily using web technologies grow and export 2X than others
In the EU about 2/3rds of businesses have a web presenceMore than 75% of the value added created by the Internet is in traditional industries
www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet_matters/pdfs/MGI_internet_matters_full_report.pdf
McKinsey Global Institute - report on the Internet’s economic impact
In the May 2011 survey we received responses from 324,697,205 sites
In 2007, the global capacity to store digital information - on computer hard disks, smartphones, CDs and other digital media - totaled 276 exabytes
via 5.mshcdn.com
A medium has a niche. A sitcom works better on TV than in a newspaper, but a 10,000 word investigative piece about a civic issue works better in a newspaper.
When it arrived the web seemed to fill all of those niches at once. The web was surprisingly good at emulating a TV, a newspaper, a book, or a radio. Which meant that people expected it to answer the questions of each medium… But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It’s its own thing. And like other media it has a question that it answers better than any other. That question is: Why wasn’t I consulted?
(article goes on to put UGC, Q&A sites, reviews, etc into context)
The web is not, despite the desires of so many, a publishing medium. The web is a customer service medium. “Intense moderation” in a customer service medium is what “editing” was for publishing.
1 in 5 children in the UK say that they have gone without food or sleep to stay online. (London School of Economics and Political Science, November 2010)
A quarter of 7-10s agree they would be ‘lost’ without the internet, rising to 46% of 11-14s. Over 90% of each group have internet access at home and the majority also use the internet at school. (Youth TGI, November 2010)
the trick Facebook has pulled is that it doesn’t feel like a walled-off world on the web. It just feels like the web: a place where users go to see what their friends are up to, take note of any games they’re playing, Groupons they’re buying, restaurants they’re reviewing on Yelp or checking into on Foursquare. Users are dipping their toes in and out of the stream, and they understand and are tolerant of the fact that the stream is generated only because they’ve shared so much data with Facebook to begin with. It feels like a huge added value.
Google is increasingly feeling like less of a value add. In its quest to be open, it’s stopped feeling like a smart filter that brings the most relevant parts of the web to users of its search, and more like the actual wild, woolly, untameable raw web itself.
