Why look for websites when you have an iPhone and Twitter

The evolution of digital communication is continuing apace, with websites rapidly losing their significance as destinations.

Social media and mobile delivery are changing the landscape so much that content is now coming to us when, where and how we want it – without the need to go looking.

And, in turn, this is diminishing the value of static websites and has virtually consigned the term “surfing the web” to the dustbin of history.

The way we find information has changed so dramatically in such a short time, that the advent of real time searching and micro-blogging has caught large areas of both business and government by surprize.  As they struggle to understand that traditional one-way marketing concepts are out of touch with a connected populace, tools such as corporate websites that present so-called key messages look more and more like relics of a bygone era.

As leading blogger, Jeremiah Owyang, said recently information and connection is coming  to you dynamically and within your personal context.

Jeremiah said  social components were emerging in areas such as e-commerce and entertainment platforms.  He predicted that even solitary digital applications such as Word would soon be forced to operate with social functionality.

Another blogger, Neil Perkin,  adds that content owners need to reach out and engage their audiences wherever they are.

 Neil says that it’s easy to slip back into old ‘destination’ thinking about attempting to put information on a website and then attempt to draw people to it .  But, communities already exist, so the job instead should be to think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do.

Fashions come and go within the new media e.g. Twitter continues to soar in popularity;  women now make up more than 60% of all Facebook users;  teenagers and 20-somethings increasingly show no loyalty to any particular social application; and newspapers still have no idea how to keep interest in their off-line products.

However, one thing is abundantly clear amid all this – what is broadly termed ’social media’ is truly one of the biggest behavioural shifts of our lifetime and, as in the case of one-way marketing, the change is claiming some casualties that will not be greatly mourned.

Ian