Categories: Articles

100 Million Websites – The Tubes Are Full

This story on CNN really caught my eye: Web Reaches New Milestone: 100 Million Sites. If the song, 57 Channels (And Nothing On), is accurate, just imagine what that says about the Internet.
The article goes on to say:
“There were just 18,000 Web sites when Netcraft, based in Bath, England, began keeping track in August of 1995. It took until May of 2004 to reach the 50 million milestone; then only 30 more months to hit 100 million, late in the month of October 2006.”
I don’t think we are prepared for the ramifications of this.
People constantly say that the Web is a media – like TV, Radio, and Print and I don’t think it is. I’m not saying I know what it is, but it’s not anything like those channels. The Net does not hold any of the limitations we see in these other media. I think the next big step for the Web (and marketers) is understanding that the model of a few major sites with most of the traffic will soon disappear. Watch and see what RSS and click-to-subscribe will do. Every person will have their own, fully-customized and personally-modifiable environment that is full of text, images, sound and video. The borders will completely blur between fixed and mobile and 100 million websites will seem just as small and silly as reading about the 18,000 websites in 1995.
That is if we can unclog all of these 100 million tubes…

Congrats on hitting the hundred million mark (and yes, I am loving the YouTube videos).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.