Peak Current Internet Approaching?

Over the last decade and a half, the Web has made a pretty big shift from comprising largely of a variety of independently run sites to a handful of very dominate platforms. The vast majority of users are being funnelled to silos like YouTube, Reddit, Twitter (no, I'm not calling it X), and various other social media.

To be fair, there are still a lot of independent sites out there but many have become so soulless, so cynical. It's not like the olden days when these sites were made by passionate hobbyists that decided to learn HTML and make a place dedicated to their particular interest. Now these sites are predominantly AI produced, heavily SEO'd drivel that is highly unhelpful, clogging up search engine results to the point that many users add "reddit" to their search queries in order to get information that is even tangentally useful. This is a big problem on its own, but I'm getting sidetracked, so let's save that discussion for another day.

What I want to talk about here is how much potential for growth these silos have left in them. "Infinite Growth!" seems to be the goal of a lot of investors and big corporations, but I think we're going to see that this just isn't realistic. Eventually a company will run out of people interested in using its product, but it takes a while to get to that point. We may be getting there soon.

This is why I am using the term "Peak Current Internet". Yes, myself and most people who wind up reading this will know that the Web and the Internet are separate things. There's overlap like a Venn Diagram, but separateness as well. That being said, the majority of people on the Web today are not that savvy. To them the entirety of the Internet is YouTube, Instagram, food delivery apps, and not much else. They don't even use email a lot of the time, which is pretty wild.

So, what I've begun to wonder is if these various platforms are starting to reach their saturation point. Have they gotten to the stage where they're going to get as many users as they're going to get that are interested in what that platform has to offer. These platforms operate on a global scale, so it would take a while to get there, especially as they wait for internet infrastructure to really sink its teeth into emerging markets. So, in some parts of the world there is still probably some room for growth, but even that will top out eventually. Moreover, the majority of income in terms of raw, repatriated revenue comes from the global north where internet infrastructure is already reasonably robust, certainly to the point that anyone that has an interest in YouTube, Instagram, or whatever are probably already on those platforms.

The days of people asking, "Hey! Have you heard of this new place on the internet? No? Well, you should definitely check it out!" are largely behind us for the time being. At least that's the case with the current crop of dominant platforms. There's always the chance something new will come along and start attracting users (TikTok says hi), but for today we're just looking at the current state of the internet and the corporate silos that dominate it. With regards to them, it's hard to imagine that there are many untapped markets that could be funnelled towards them.

We're already kind of seeing that. For example, Twitch is seeing most of its growth in non-English speaking sectors. The most popular English speaking streamers are largely staying the same and their viewer counts aren't going up much higher nowadays. Meanwhile, it's the non-English speaking streamings that are seeing their numbers go up quite a bit as other parts of the world start going to Twitch en masse the way the West did 5-10 years ago. Growth is starting to top out in certain areas of Twitch, and likely do the same across the board given time.

Similarly, other platforms have struggled with growth in recent years, not the least of which being Twitter. They've been having trouble with that for years, even before the company got bought out. YouTube hasn't been doing great either to the point where they have to talk up growth in Shorts views like it's something special. Nevermind that shorts make significantly less on ads, and growth there has been at the expense of regular videos that historically pay more. This doesn't even take into account that so many of these companies only mention revenue in their financial reports. It's never profit that comes up, which raises an eyebrow. If any of these businesses were making respectable profits off they would be quick to brag about it. Even if their incomes were flat due to fancy accounting that is more beneficial to them (which sometimes happens), analysts would take note and hype up these companies anyway. None of that is happening. It's getting to the point where it seems like these companies are grasping at straws trying to find ways to bring in more money. We may soon be getting to the point where we're in "Trying to get blood from a stone" territory.

I can see a lot of these platforms start to tighten how they operate and perhaps look more closely at how to optimize current income streams. It's already happening and seems likely to accelerate. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon's are increasing subscription fees and tossing in ads. Twitch has gotten extremely obnoxious with their ads in the last few years. Then there's the war YouTube is having with ad blockers. I think these are all signs that the age of infinite growth is drawing to a close for these platforms. They need to find other ways to make money, and will likely start trimming the fat soon. YouTube doesn't need to be hosting countless archived videos of Twitch streamers with three followers on their servers. I could see those getting dumped eventually. It may get to the point where users will only have a limited amount of free server space on YouTube, then have to pay a monthly fee for more. The days of gregariously offering up server space and bandwidth because it attracts a lot of users, and in turn a lot of investment capital are over. We're at the point where these companies will be expected to operate like actual businesses, not startups.

We're at the point where a lot of the big internet platforms really need to prove how viable they are as actual businesses. Given what they've done so far, I'm not convinced that they have any good ideas. I do get the impression that because of this, in 5 to 10 years time many of them will look very different than they do now, assuming that they even exist anymore.

Pennywhether

pennywhether@posteo.net

March 7, 2024