New ideas, products, and services grow in the public consciousness very quickly now, but what I find more interesting is how quickly the backlash against the hype sets in. The most recent example is WiFi. For the last year or so, it’s been the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now, the backlash begins, with a Forrester report that got picked up in many places, like the BBC. Quite the overstated headline — “Wi-fi will be ‘next dot.com crash’“. What is meant is that the business of running hotspots will not be terribly profitable, and the many companies expanding to fill the seeming vacuum of opportunity there will all flail and crash. Maybe, but the real story is that the growth in usage is unimpeded, and impressive. As the BBC author notes:
In many ways, wi-fi is already successful, with more and more homes and offices cutting the cable clutter and using wireless routers to link up their computers and connect to the internet.
I’ve got it going at home, and it’s in place at the office, too. It’s just about the short-range mobility, not free-ranging bandwidth everywhere. Honestly, this is why Bluetooth should have been (and may be? well, don’t go there) ‘all that’ — because cables are miserable. Wireless mice demonstrate the same thing: digging around the back of your computer or other device is a pain in the a–. Even those devices which are friendly enough to have various plugs on the front of a device, within reach and sightlines, only ameliorate an annoying situation. How pleasant it is to situate everything just where you want it, not where cables dictate.
Anyway, I’ve strayed from my point. WiFi is here, and growing. Whether there is a business for anyone but the manufacturers of the hardware remains to be seen.
But at least that’s more straightforward than RSS, which is just a damn format but seems to be experiencing a related form of angst. Just let RSS keep growing organically, rather than renaming and rewiring it. Few care about the nuts and bolts of RSS, let alone the name — everyone just wants a more convenient, efficient way to consume information. RSS is almost the WD-40 of the online news & opinion space… it flows everywhere, and is often enough to do the job without resorting to more dramatic means. WD-40 doesn’t do every lubrication job, but very few people buy anything stronger.