The 4th Era of Internet is starting

We are again in the midst of a new evolution. There is another change of era on the internet. Like the Chinese curse says: “May you live in interesting times!” The new era will bring new challenge to each one of us, not to mention the major effects on marketers.
We can divide the internet age into four era:
1) Academic Internet Era (before 1993)
Enabling technology: the internet infrastructure
2) The Browsable Web Era (1993 to 1999/2000)
Enabling technology: world wide web
3) The Searchable Web Era (2000 to 2010)
Enabling technology: Google Search
4) The Mobile & Social Web Era ( 2010 to …)
Enabling technology: Apple (iPad/iPhone) & Facebook Like
All the new era’s on the internet brought it’s own winners and losers and new business models to the internet. The fourth era, however is even more challenging. The change is on two axis; the mobility (always on mechanism), and the social aspects of the internet. This era will not only bring it’s own winners and losers and business models, but will also touch the DNA of capitalism, democracy and the society. It will touch every company, every political party, every government, every NGO, every family much deeper.
The big change that the 4th era is bringing is the social aspect which will change our habits of consuming the internet. Web will not be ranked to Google’s algorithm anymore, but with our friends choices (that is “Facebook Like” functionality).
Pete Cashmore of Mashable takes it even further saying; “Facebook seeks to replace this open system of links between pages with the “social links” (or Likes) that it controls. Google and other search engines won’t have full access to all these Likes, so the company best positioned to rank the Web will be Facebook.” (see the full article on CNN: Google’s nightmare: Facebook ‘Like’ replaces links )
PS. The bad voices against Facebook and its somehow “ethically challenged” founder Mark Zuckerberg are also to note. I hope Facebook will be in the hands of good management and it will be an enabling catalysator to this new evolution.