Marty's Struggle
I've had a problem lately. I've been preoccupied with how my job as a Marketing Director at the web and software development company Atlantic BT is changing.
Fundamental things are changing but HOW and WHY?
Entropy Always Increases
Brian Cox's sand castle entropy lesson helped me see into how and why the web is disassembling - Entropy. Think of Web 2.0 as the top of a bell curve where we've organized into a series of sand castles (see chart at bottom for graphic of the Web's Entropy Wave). The web's entropy wind is dismantling the low entropy environment we've created NOW to a more loosely defined higher entropy Web 3.0.
"Its overwhelmingly more likely when the wind blows the sand around it will take the low entropy structure and turn it into a high entropy structure - the sand pile. So entropy always increases. Why is that?
Because it is overwhelmingly more likely it will. It seems incredible that a law that says sand castles don't spontaneously form on the wind could solve one of the deepest mysteries in physics. But by saying entropy always increases the second law of thermodynamics explains why tides only run in one direction."
Brian Cox Wonder of the Universe
Entropy and Web Design
Entropy is moving the web's organized sand castles (websites) to an overwhelmingly more likely lower entropy Web 3.0. The signs of our "lower entropy" Web 3.0 future include:
- Social Media Marketing's insistance on User Generated Content.
- Mobile's wrecking ball.
- Google's Panda and Penguin machine algorithm changes.
- Move to a semantic web of sentiment and intelligence.
- Emphasis on storytelling linking single pages to many pages.
- New media such as video tied only to the web's suface.
- Visuals information crushing textual info (Pinterest v Twitter).
- Collapse of web "stars".
Social Media Marketing's Wind
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the wind in Cox's entropy analogy. Social media could pick up the bits of sand from high entropy looseness and deposit them on the highly organized structures that already exist (i.e.move to more low entropy structures), but it is not likely.
Much more "overwhelmingly likely" is SMM is disaggregating the highly organized structures that only feel institutional and forever (can you say MySpace?). In time ALL institutions crumble because entropy moves content from low entropy and highly organized structures to higher entropy looser ones.
SMM alone couldn't move much of the sand away from existing castles such as Google, Apple and Amazon. SMM + Mobile + Semantic and a perfect storm is brewing inside the web, a storm moving the current web stars (low entropy) to a state of higher entropy (Web 3.0).
Mobile's Wrecking Ball
Mobile with its insistence on SPEED, its smaller frame of reference and its "show stories don't tell them" visual ecosystem is the wrecking ball increasing entropy's impact and speed. Show don't tell is why video is so important in a more mobile world. Without mobile SMM's entropy changes could take years. With mobile SMM's changes will take seconds. Those changes include:
- Data structure moves from unrelated blocks to highly connected snippets.
- The move toward a visual web increases by the square.
- Curation, the combination of snippet blocks, increases in importance.
- Free time is eliminated in favor of a constant game.
This last point, mobile's constant game, is the real end result of mobile's wrecking ball impact on "the web". Once we stood online at Starbucks engulfed in our own thoughts. Now we are connected via the game console that is our phone to the world at all times and in all places.
If you are an Internet marketer you feel the shift away from what you used to do to something very new. Mobile leads that charge. Customers use their mobile devices to curate their lives. If you don't entice, excite and WOW in seconds on mobile your message is discarded with a simple swipe.
Mobile Brings Good News Too
Mobile and SMM are disintermediating the web's "Stars". It is possible to build a sizable business without a single Google #1 organic listing thanks to SMM and mobile. As few as 18 months ago Google organic listings were the traffic cop in control of the web's money. Less so now and much less so in another year.
Mobile is like video in some ways. Video is not a tooth like most content with deep roots based on hyperlinks. Video rides on the web's surface so it is easy to blow video all over the web (like embedding the Cox video here). When you play Cox's video on ScentTrail Marketing the benefit of your longer engagement stays with ScentTrail Marketing while other parts of the "juice" flow to YouTube.
YouTube is one of the more Web 3.0-like "Stars" because it is a platform of platforms, it is, to borrow Lisa Gansky's term, meshed. I wrote about the death of websites and the growth of platforms, now I realize there is another level to how entropy is changing the web.
Platforms of platforms is the next higher entropy state. Platforms of platforms such as YouTube create a loosely defining structure other platforms use to amplify and rearrange their content from low to high entropy (from tightly organized to more losse and free flowing).
Ah, we've arrived at the real secret. If the web's wave-like momentum is always toward higher entropy the secret is understanding the next higher level of entropy and get there first. Simply stated: He who has the most entropy wins.
Entropy Wave
Social Media Marketing's Wind
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the wind in Cox's entropy analogy. Social media could pick up the bits of sand from high entropy looseness and deposit them on the highly organized structures that already exist (i.e.move to more low entropy structures), but it is not likely.
SMM alone couldn't move much of the sand away from existing castles such as Google, Apple and Amazon. SMM + Mobile + Semantic and a perfect storm is brewing inside the web, a storm moving the current web stars (low entropy) to a state of higher entropy (Web 3.0).
Mobile's Wrecking Ball
Mobile with its insistence on SPEED, its smaller frame of reference and its "show stories don't tell them" visual ecosystem is the wrecking ball increasing entropy's impact and speed. Show don't tell is why video is so important in a more mobile world. Without mobile SMM's entropy changes could take years. With mobile SMM's changes will take seconds. Those changes include:
- Data structure moves from unrelated blocks to highly connected snippets.
- The move toward a visual web increases by the square.
- Curation, the combination of snippet blocks, increases in importance.
- Free time is eliminated in favor of a constant game.
This last point, mobile's constant game, is the real end result of mobile's wrecking ball impact on "the web". Once we stood online at Starbucks engulfed in our own thoughts. Now we are connected via the game console that is our phone to the world at all times and in all places.
If you are an Internet marketer you feel the shift away from what you used to do to something very new. Mobile leads that charge. Customers use their mobile devices to curate their lives. If you don't entice, excite and WOW in seconds on mobile your message is discarded with a simple swipe.
Mobile and SMM are disintermediating the web's "Stars". It is possible to build a sizable business without a single Google #1 organic listing thanks to SMM and mobile. As few as 18 months ago Google organic listings were the traffic cop in control of the web's money. Less so now and much less so in another year.
If you are an Internet marketer you feel the shift away from what you used to do to something very new. Mobile leads that charge. Customers use their mobile devices to curate their lives. If you don't entice, excite and WOW in seconds on mobile your message is discarded with a simple swipe.
Mobile Brings Good News Too
Mobile and SMM are disintermediating the web's "Stars". It is possible to build a sizable business without a single Google #1 organic listing thanks to SMM and mobile. As few as 18 months ago Google organic listings were the traffic cop in control of the web's money. Less so now and much less so in another year.
Mobile is like video in some ways. Video is not a tooth like most content with deep roots based on hyperlinks. Video rides on the web's surface so it is easy to blow video all over the web (like embedding the Cox video here). When you play Cox's video on ScentTrail Marketing the benefit of your longer engagement stays with ScentTrail Marketing while other parts of the "juice" flow to YouTube.
YouTube is one of the more Web 3.0-like "Stars" because it is a platform of platforms, it is, to borrow Lisa Gansky's term, meshed. I wrote about the death of websites and the growth of platforms, now I realize there is another level to how entropy is changing the web.
Platforms of platforms is the next higher entropy state. Platforms of platforms such as YouTube create a loosely defining structure other platforms use to amplify and rearrange their content from low to high entropy (from tightly organized to more losse and free flowing).
Ah, we've arrived at the real secret. If the web's wave-like momentum is always toward higher entropy the secret is understanding the next higher level of entropy and get there first. Simply stated: He who has the most entropy wins.
YouTube is one of the more Web 3.0-like "Stars" because it is a platform of platforms, it is, to borrow Lisa Gansky's term, meshed. I wrote about the death of websites and the growth of platforms, now I realize there is another level to how entropy is changing the web.
Platforms of platforms is the next higher entropy state. Platforms of platforms such as YouTube create a loosely defining structure other platforms use to amplify and rearrange their content from low to high entropy (from tightly organized to more losse and free flowing).
Ah, we've arrived at the real secret. If the web's wave-like momentum is always toward higher entropy the secret is understanding the next higher level of entropy and get there first. Simply stated: He who has the most entropy wins.
Entropy Wave
Comments
Brian Yanish @MarketingHits comment on Scoop.it Marty, great post. Really enjoyed it.
I've said web developers of the future will need to start studying the history of open source software and how it changed software as we know it. The same thing is happening to the web. As we move to web 3.0 it becomes more web open source 3.0. User generated web development. Just look at a the amount of API's that are used across the web, throw in sites like https://ifttt.com and now you have user generated web development that is cross platform. Entropy cannot be contained.
(November 23, 11:29 PM)
BackStory
I just added some backstory for how I got to this point on G+: Entropy Backstory on Google Plus
2 comments:
An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this.
First of all i would like to thank you for the great and informative entry. I have to admit
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this information I have noticed many new facts for me. Thanks a lot for sharing this
useful and attractive information and
I will be waiting for other interesting posts from you in the nearest future. Keep it up.
Drupal developer London
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