Future of the Bottom-Up Internet

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Welcome


Group Members

  • Jim Harders
  • Andrew Li
  • Robert Sparenaaij

Research Questions

To research the bottom up internet we had to set up some research questions, the questions have been split up to show who gave the greatest contribution in answering them.

Jim

  1. What is bottom up internet?
    • The “bottom up internet” is a descriptive term meaning a collection of techniques / services / products that make it possible to transform normal internet users into content providers. This can be with the purpose of providing leisure but also with the purpose of sharing and creating knowledge.
  2. What techniques are used for the bottom up internet?
    • A combination of standards that are available to the public but combined to provide a better user experience, for example: AJAX (Javascript, (X)HTML, XML, DOM, XMLHttpRequest), RSS, CGI.
    • Additional technologies that can also be used are the Server based scripting languages, JAVA and databases.
    • In short everything that can be used to provide internet content.
  3. What services are used for the bottom up internet?
    • Offerings of: Blogspaces, Webspaces, Forums, Wikispaces, Podcasts, Open source participation and support for all the previously mentioned development techniques.
    • Also additional services related to improving the surfing quality of the individual users like identification services and content generation based on the user profile.
  4. What products are used for the bottom up internet?
    • There are a lot of products relating to the bottom up internet, they are provided by different companies but all are related to the techniques and services offered: BitTorrent, Wikipedia, Napster, CU2, SNARFER, SharpReader, NetNewsWire, Straw, Bloglines, www.blogger.com, www.podcast.com, www.ipodder.org,
  5. How many blogs are there?
  6. How many users are blogging?
    • Around 30% of internet users read blogs
  7. Is there an increase in blogs / users?
    • The amount of blogs to track doubles every 5 months.
    • The amount of bloggers increases a little less fast than the blogs.
  8. How big are blogs?
    • The total number of messages on tracked blogs is 2.1 billion.
    • The number of blogs tracked is 30.8 million.
    • 2.1 billion divided by 30.8 million is around 70 messages per blog. However there are blogs which are for personal use only and others that have more than 100 posts a day.
  9. How big is the bittorrent community?
    • 1/3 of the internet traffic now a days is due to bittorrent usage.
    • At any time there are more than 2.5 million transfers going around.
  10. How big is the open source community?

Robert

Andrew

    What is blogs ? And why using blogs?
    • A blog (short for "Web log") is a cross between a personal diary and a list of links to articles on the Web. Internet users can create them, and anyone surfing the Web can read them.
    • Everyone can express his meaning/thought or sharing information on a easy way.
    • In Web 1.0, a small number of writers created Web pages for a large number of readers. Over time, however, more and more people started writing content in addition to reading it.

    What will the bottom-up internet effect?
    • New search engines, an online marketplace, solutions for spam, communication.

    Who are the users of WebLog?
    • People have stuff they want to share (or axes to grind or stuff they want to say), so giving them a place to express themselves and a community of users to share it with will result in a system that grows exponentially through the network effect to become more than the sum of its parts

    What is bottom-up internet important for?
    • According to some expert bottom-up internet infrastructure is the key to achieve a knowledge-based society. It can change peoples lifestyle, knowledge, view, politics … etc.

    how many podcast users?
    • The study estimates that 4.8 million persons have at some time during 2005 downloaded a podcast from either a radio station or other source. While in 2004 only 820,000 podcast users.
    • More interestingly, on average less than 20% listen to their podcast downloads on an MP3 player or other digital device.
    • By 2010 podcast audience growth is expected to reach a conservative 45 million users who will have ever listened to a podcast. Aggressive estimates place this number closer to 75 million by this date.

Driving Forces

We have identified the following driving forces:

Jim

  • Mass customization: People are becoming accustomed to the fact that products are specialised for their needs. In areas in which the customization doesn't fit their needs they try to find solutions of their own. The internet is a very good place to share those customizations.
  • Improved user friendliness of web based publishing services: Because it has become easier to publish content online most of the borders preventing publishing have fanished and thus more users publish.
  • Improved integration of IT into the current society: More and more people are growing up with computers or know how they work because of having to work with them at a company. This makes the group of internet and thus also bottom up internet users bigger and better.

Robert

Andrew

    More possibility by faster internet connection.
    As internet connection speed keeps increasing, people want to share/download music, movie or information with/from others.
    New service opportunity.
    Companies try to provide better service then his competitors. Try to differentiate from others.
    Freedom of speaking.
    As new technology develops, more and more people have access to the internet at low cost. And so more and more people wants/needs to express his meaning/thought. And some people wants Freedom on expression, especially in China where internet is restricted.
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