Internet Business Decline.....

[professorrosado]

Has anyone noticed declines in the Internet space? I've been noticing shifts, shutdowns, and traffic declines (not Google related). What have you noticed? Have you been affected by a shutdown? Past traffic venues not working as before?

 

[jaztez]

I think the sands are always shifting, but I'm still finding that major venues such as Twitter and Facebook work for traffic, along with new ways that people often missed, such as flip board on android.

I think people are a lot more protective of that online space nowadays and so there are fewer free opportunities.

 

[PTTed]

Has anyone noticed declines in the Internet space? I've been noticing shifts, shutdowns, and traffic declines (not Google related). What have you noticed? Have you been affected by a shutdown? Past traffic venues not working as before?

I have noticed traffic declines in the IM industry. I think a lot of people bailed out of this industry after Google Penguin. It seemed like a lot of the IM forums started drying up in terms of conversations shortly after that.

The picks and shovels that people are selling to the gold miners in the IM industry have changed too. A lot of the old software tools that used to be really valuable just sit idle on people's computers not being used.

And it seems that niches in every industry are becoming even more niche specific with better competition. Not necessarily more competition, just better competition. People are producing better websites and better solutions than they ever have in the past.

 

[elcidofaguy]

Great post Ted! I also think people are becoming much more savvy these days and can sense BS when presented and like you said the quality of the competition is better with regards to products that are on the market.... I personally don't see a decline - but the opposite - a thriving industry of many startups and people pursuing IM as a full time career...

 

[professorrosado]

What you guys are describing seems to be a maturing industry - leaving behind its infamous and vivacious infancy. This evolution of IM is bringing about a more robust product and many "All-In-One" type of offers obviously intended for the now "experienced" IMer.

Then again, it just might be that we're in between waves with another soon coming. The next wave may be from new emerging Internet markets or simply fostered by new innovations.

 

[PTTed]

PTTed

Yeah the market continues its never ending evolutionary process. That is the nature of doing business on the web or even offline. You are forced to adapt to the changes and try to either keep up with them or get ahead of them. Its that way with every business really.

For a long, long time to come there will still be a steady stream of new people entering the IM world trying to carve out their own little niche and build a sustainable business doing it.

I think the whole Google Penguin thing was just pressing a reset button on the IM industry. Just like a recession forces the weakest companies out of business, the Google Penguin thing forced a lot of online business owners out of business who were too dependent on Google for traffic. (Not all of them, but a lot of them.) They gave up trying to defeat Google thinking that Google was going to keep releasing new versions of these "animal named" algorithm changes that were going to nuke whatever new website a person tried to build.

You just don't see the number of active SEO threads on forums anymore compared to how it used to be just a few years ago. There just aren't as many people doing it. And the ones who are still doing it have been doing it long enough that they learned what was true and what wasn't. The number of newbies trying to figure out the Google ranking algorithm just isn't as big as it once was. At least that is how it seems to me.

Sorry....I went off on a tangent about Google when you asked about things other than Google in your original post....