Has the Internet Changed in 10 years? Yes. But you haven’t.

April 17th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Brian Litvak, Biz Dev & Marketing guru at Sportsvite, wrote an interesting post the other day, basically claiming that the biggest lessons from the Internet were taught and learned a decade ago, when he entered college. Taught to and learned by him, that is.

Here’s his take:

If we could turn back the clock to the fall of 99 and ask the younger, skinnier, less burnt out Littyhoops about his thoughts on these services I would have told you

1) I will never pay for music ever again because it’s already free
2) I’ll always use the internet to “chat” with friends and stay connected to them

My point here is that these trends were super obvious to me back then. Yet, eight years later we still have music executive at the major labels fighting to turn back the clock… Meanwhile, online chat has become both ubiquitous and a commodity (how AOL managed NOT to take over the digital world with this is beyond me) but it still doesn’t seem to get the love and attention it deserves.

So if the biggest truths haven’t changed in 10 years for Brian, how does he stay on top of his game? He looks to current college students — like his sister — to see what the latest trends will be.

Question:
As you get older and your “truths” have longer half-lives, how do you stay fresh with trends?

Tags: Web-trends

2 responses so far ↓

1 Litvack // Apr 17, 2008 at 4:58 pm

Thanks for t he love and very good question and one I’m trying to figure out as i just turned 27 which officially puts me in my “late” twenties….

One example that scares me — The Facebook poke. What the heck is the point of it. Do you poke cute girls, do you poke relatives when you want to say hi? Can you poke dudes?

Everytime i ask a younger friend that was in college when Facebook hit the answer is so obvious to them that they have never even thought about it. It has something to do with it being the very first feature and it is what it is etc., etc.

Basically i’m the guy who just doesn’t “get it”. The fact that i think about the meaning of the poke is lame.

I’m still young enough to get by and my social lifestyle is still more similar to a 22 year old then a married dad but what happens in 10 years.

Isn’t it just going to get harder to stay on top of it? It’s already harder than it was in college.
2 Rachel Clarke // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:31 am

Ow - now I feel completely past it! When I was at college there was no web (internet, yes, web, no). So what do I do? Read, talk, play with, try everything. It’s hard work but it’s what I do.

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