Web 2.Whatever

by G. Sax

There is a fair chance that this blog will be obsolete by next year at this time.

Isn't that something? Today's blogs are tomorrow's shoezoos, or whatever the Next Big Thing will be. That's how fast things move now. If you're in the real estate business, you'd better get used to it. If you're in any business, you'd better get used to it. If you're a consumer of things, you already seem to be used to it, because you've proven to be a resilient lot, and all this recession hoo-hah will do nothing to thwart you from the opportunities inherent in advancement.

People of Earth, this is my advice: Don't kid yourself on this fast-forward world. In the lifetime of the youngest generation that could possibly be reading this post, big-time, 100-year sort of sh*t has gone down. Stuff that matches oil and steel and electricity. Stuff that was inconceivable to any of us over the age of 30.

Microwaves are magic. We've arrived at Halo 3 from Atari 2600. While trying to figure out how the physical aspects of LPs, tapes, and CDs worked, LimeWire became the most popular source of obtaining aural pleasure. Human Genome Project...OMG. The Internet...uh-duh.

I was convinced in 1992 that the Internet was going to be the be-all. I was a supercool early adopter of things Internet because I was lucky enough to work a couple of buildings away from where "gopher" dug its first holes. I was a frequent visitor to the computer lab at the University of Minnesota. I knew what was coming. And I invested. And I became unbelievably rich. Okay, that's not at all true. But I did know the world was forever changed. I can at least claim that.

The power of the Internet will continue to expand. What I was once only able to do from a slow-booting desktop computer on the third-floor of a secure building...is now done from the comfort of a recliner in my living room on an always-on laptop without wires...will be done one day from the comfort of deep slumber without keystrokes or any other sort of physical contact with my LittleNemo G12 astralputer.

Blogs are weak like flat HTML pages were weak three years ago. Were weak like Flash-enabled, slow-loading intro pages were two years ago. Were weak like 360-degree tours and green screen, walk-onto-the-page video was last year. Were weak like Twitter is this year. Yeah, I said it. Twitter is weak. And so are blogs.

I say that as someone who is completely overhauling a personal website of more than a thousand unique, static pages to a blog format. I'm doing it because I have to, not because I think it will last more than a couple of years before I have to do something else.

Fold or fight. I'm taping my fists and skipping extra rope.

To get to the point. (Really? You have a point?) I don't normally make a habit of promoting other websites and other consultant-types, because ultimately I think I'm the ultimate consultant-type and you should contact me for public engagements and I should motivate and amaze you.

But this promotion is worthwhile. Teresa tells me not to cater so much to REALTORS® in my blog posts, but REALTORS® are the ones that comment, and I dig(g) comments. When she wrote about the new SAFEMLS key fobs that are coming to the Twin Cities market, y'all went stoopid for sayin' stuff. When I write about the epicuriosities of St. Paul, it goes all crickets. So REALTORS®...can you survive Web 2.Whatever? St. Paulites in the house: How will you be making your big-ticket purchases in the future? Will REALTORS® even be involved? Or will you be using Realtorocity, Realpedia, or...?