So, the unexpected passing of Michael Jackson has been causing quite a stir. An unintended consequence of this unfortunate story is that the people hit the Internet to confirm the rumors. They hit it hard, causing downtime at numerous web sites. (Arguably, an even less expected side effect of his passing is that when MJ brought down twitter, Iranians were unable to tweet about their ongoing revolt. Oh, Internet, how fragile you are…)

Is MJ’s departure a unique, record setting event? I doubt it. It’s part of a trend, and I think it’s going to become the norm. We all know that Internet usage hasn’t plateaued yet. In fact, once it does, that will be pretty big news. In the meantime, it continues to grow thanks to increasing connectivity, abundance of netbooks and mobile devices, innovation on the web itself and, of course, a growing awareness of the web’s ever-increasing utility.

Think of the DESIGN GOAL for IPv6: let’s make everything uniquely addressable. EVERYTHING. What were those mad men thinking? What could we possibly want to address? They were preparing for a technology-drenched future. Let’s pave the way for innovation, let’s address devices that don’t even exist yet. That will lead to an incredible increase in connectivity and overall network utility! More, cheaper devices, with new, unforeseen functionality! Everyone benefits.

But that’s just concept. In the meantime, mashup-based cross-pollination of web content is rapidly growing, and the trend is all up from here. That’s not just “people on the web” anymore, that’s people USING the web. This affects everyone. Can the pipes handle it? What’s the horse power behind your web app? If you don’t know, find out, because today’s traffic nightmare is going to be tomorrow’s drop in the bucket.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Company. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.