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After reading a lot of marketing hype on the concept that the Internet is falling apart and becoming a “splinternet”, I have to respond:
The Internet is not just simple access to web sites, it’s not your ability to use Skype on your AT&T smart phone, and it’s not IPv4 and IPv6. It simply is a network of networks that use a common underlying protocol (TCP/IP). The web is simply one of thousands and thousands of other applications that use their own protocols over IP. To some the Internet may simply be email, others chat. Even TCP/IP can be (and is) often filtered, yet it’s still a network of networks. |
What a country, corporation, or network decides to do with the way their networks function is really up to the policy of that network owner and the majority of its users. It always has been that way. Fourteen or fifteen years ago corporate America figured out that they can control what their users see and do, governments figured it out, and so did network providers.
I’m not an advocate of network filtration, control, and restrictions — it’s repugnant. However, how a society polices itself is up to that society and does not dictate that the Internet is broken.
In recent tweets I have seen companies push their products with comments such as, “How we broke the good old Internet, and why 90′s were simply better.” The link goes to their blog then shows how they fix the broken Internet. Marketing people, I don’t know if you remember but in the 90’s we had AOL and Prodigy and if anything resembled a “broke” Internet, it was that! Oh yeah… and broadband was measured in Kbps not Mbps or Gbps. Internet today is functioning fine, we may have a concentration of users on apps like Facebook and Twitter, yet the entire protocol stack is still available and by no means has the Internet fractured or splintered so badly that it is broken.
If anything we may have outgrown a 30-year-old protocol that resembles a 1970′s used Cessna aircraft that has duct tape holding on parts of its interior, but just like the 70′s Cessna the Internet still works and does what it was built to do.
I’ll accept a term like Splinternet when there really is a network that’s unique and separated from the Internet for public consumption. Maybe it is time a for a bunch of people to organize a world wide wireless network that cuts out all corporations and really have it splinter off the Internet. However, I would rather hear that called the Alternet (for nostalgic reasons) than a Splinternet. Yet, eventually this alternative network will join with the Internet and it will basically be… The Internet all over again.
P.S. stormdriver.com can you please fix the credits on the image you are using. I have no idea who Matt Britt is but I made the image you are using for your marketing purposes. The original image is here
Tags: Internet, Splinternet
“…but just like the 70′s Cessna the Internet still works and does what it was built to do.”
Unless you are Ted Stevens.
I’m just saying.
Hey! I resemble that comment! LOL.
I’ve always been a little confused by the academic descriptions of the Splinternet too.
My company, SEO, LLC, is an SEO company and I’ve been doing SEO since the beginning of search engines. I even developed my own search engines just so that I could more easily put myself into their shoes. That being said, I started using the phrase Splinternet Marketing to describe the fact that SEO no longer stands on its own and includes as many off page aspects as on page aspects.
All of the different social media profiles and interactions with followers, friends, connections and everything else people are called play a very important role in the success of a website in search engine rankings and they can deliver additional traffic from targeted visitors that didn’t specifically go to a search engine and type in a phrase relevant to a website.
When I use the phrase Splinternet Marketing, I’m simply trying to let people know that SEO is not just about meta tags on a website and that Internet marketing is about a whole lot more than just having fans on a Facebook page.
I can share these aspects of the academic definition of Splinternet Marketing that do affect SEO with you:
30% of traffic to my customer sites now come from mobile devices, so I recommend a mobile site for everyone with a product or service to sell along with their traditional website. This is especially important for parts websites. Pool parts, car parts, whatever. It is very convenient for a person to be looking at the part on whatever it is they are trying to fix and just type in the part number and manufacturer into their cell phone to find where they can get the part and the price.
IP addresses do make a big difference. Google will ignore links that it thinks are made from the same team going to any website, so if the IP addresses are only one digit apart, the chances are that Google will think the links coming from that IP to a website one digit away is a manufactured link. Many companies have multiple websites, and there is often a good reason well beyond link popularity, but if you’re going to take the effort, put it on a different network and completely different IP address range. Posts between you and your friends on Facebook and LinkedIn or other networks which the academes call the Splinternet, are often not ranked at all in the search engines, so if you are finding your market on these or other networks, then by all means you have to be on those networks telling your story.
I agree wholehearteldy, the Internet is not broken at all. It is far more complex now than in the 90′s and it is also a lot more fun and productive. Where else but Facebook could Sims have made a comeback?