Keeping up with the future

Ever wondered how many blog posts actually start with "sorry I haven't posted anything for a while"?

A recent study I just made up (come on, most of them are, I'm just admitting it!) says that 32% of blog posts begin exactly like that or something along those lines.

It is hard to keep up. Prioritising is the order of the day, I'm still getting used to fatherhood, and am prepared for at least a further 20 years to keep getting used to it! There does seem to be more things to keep up with than ever before, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, they never used to exist and it wasn't that long ago either. They are there though, so if you use them you need to keep up.

The internet has changed everything and is still changing itself. On a forum I occasionally frequent (another thing to keep up with), there are debates about Ebay and Amazon and their decline, rise, failings, benefits, etc, truth is no one has a clue as to where they are going. Amazon seemed to appear from nowhere, I don't really need to tell you that you can buy (and sell) almost anything on Amazon to anyone in the world (although amazingly not as yet in Australia), yet their core market of books, cds and dvds is dwindling away. Amazon's increasing market is in downloads, books, music, film and tv programmes can be purchased and even rented, how amazing is it that items that don't really have a physical presence can be such a growing market? Even when Amazon started they didn't know that was going to happen.

As Ebay has grown so has people's belief that they have a right to use it, that it is somehow public domain and not a business. Sorry chaps, but Ebay is a business and they need to make their profit, one of Ebay's biggest failings has been its success, the bigger it grows, the more users it gets, the more it gets its detractors, and people complaining are a much louder voice than those happy souls who are watching the first series of House that they just purchased for under a fiver (guess what the last thing I bought was?!).

So, how else, I hear you ask has Ebay's success been counterproductive to Ebay? Think of all the items that were once upon a time rare and hard to find that now everyone and anyone can sell on Ebay, coins, stamps, pots, pictures, books, music, etc. Where before you would have to go to a dealer to find Fly Fishing by JR Hartley, a simple search on Ebay would find 27 copies of it. Where the dealer could previously charge £100 for a rare copy, JR Hartley's ex wife is knocking them out for a fiver. Previously Ebay could command the £100 too, but that decreases over time. That's not to say Ebay is dwindling away, just that markets change as they adjust to a different world. For every market that has been depleted by the internet there is another one that has had a growth spurt, just think how many more padded envelopes are sold now than ten years ago.

It could be that Amazon and Ebay join forces one day, with Ebay handling physical items and Amazon the digital. Perhaps Ebay will move into downloads. Maybe Apple will set up an outlet store and sell half price downloads. As high street names seem to be dwindling away Woolworths, Habitat, Ethel Austin, Threshers, Peacocks and others on the way, the internet is still growing, it would be a fool who would bet against names such as Google, Ebay, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, not being around in ten years, but what about 20 or 50 or even 100? Go back 20 years and none of them existed so how much of a hold can they have?
Won't we get fed up of new things coming along and decide that we want to stick with what we have? Or will change become the norm and we'll jump from one social media to another, from one selling site to another?

Has anyone else chuckled when they've seen a combined telephone directory/yellow pages and how small they are now? Let's hope JR Hartley still uses his and not the internet, I'd hate for him to find out what his ex wife said about him on Ebay!