An Unavoidable Question

At one time or another we have heard the phrase that we are approaching critical mass on the Internet. Yet pundits usually throw around the term without defining what it really is. What they are sure of, however, is that this critical mass thing is nearing and necessary.

There is not one precise definition of what critical mass means, but several. Nevertheless, it can be viewed from either an ecological or economical perspective. Ecologically speaking, critical mass is when a certain environment can no longer sustain growth on a large scale. This is because resources have become strained to the breaking point. Hence, further growth will either lead to a depletion of resources or the inability to utilise these resources optimally.

Economically speaking, critical mass is much like a pyramid scheme. As long as growth continues at an exponential scale, the pyramid expands. As soon as this growth slows, stops, or even reverses, the entire structure begins to collapse. Although similar in many respects to the ecological dilemma, in where growth outstrips the availability and sustainability of resources, the economic aspect is based more on behaviour and the generation of wealth; while the pyramid is theoretically endless, in practice it's limited by those who are willing to believe in it and have the capital to invest.

Whichever view to critical mass you may subscribe, ecological or economic, in either case the underlying notion is that substantial growth can't continue indefinitely, for whatever reason.

In terms of the Internet, the critical mass usually referred to is its user base, which has been growing at a phenomenal rate. Recently, the question of the Internet approaching this critical mass was raised as new statistics from Media Metrix Inc. revealed that growth of the user base has substantially slowed.

According to Media Metrix, which conducts a monthly survey of American users, keeping track of current and new web users (including tracking certain web site traffic), there are now 63.4 million web users growing at a rate of around 750,000 per month. However, September didn't quite reach its expected potential, growing only 2% rather than the usual 4%.

This shift was reflected in many of the popular sites on the Internet. Major domains like Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, Lycos, and sites that are part of the Go Network showed no increase. Conversely, weather related sites and those dealing with weather stories, such as ABCNews.com and USAToday.com, registered an increase. The main reasoning behind this is the spate of recent meteorological calamities, such as Hurricane Floyd.

Of course, not everyone accepts these statistics nor its interpretation. Doug McFarland, VP of Media Metrix, cautioned that the sample may have been too small and is thus not giving a true reading.

Others, however, believe the statistics to be correct and significant. Henry Blodgett of Merrill Lynch claimed the latest numbers are indicative of an overall flattening of web growth.

Whichever side you happen to agree with, one thing is for certain: the Internet will at one point reach critical mass. Predictions as to what this will entail is a tricky matter, for the Internet is influenced by a unique combination of both the ecological and economic aspects to critical mass.

One reason growth will slow is that the Internet will begin to lose its novelty aspect, that is, if it hasn't started to already. Coupled with this, problems related to bandwidth and the speed of information delivery will also turn away some from the medium.

Although the world is populated by over six billion people, the number of people who can afford to be online and have the educational background to operate a computer is quite small and finite. Hence, after everyone who can afford to be online is using the Internet, a rapidly expanding user base as we know it will be a thing of the past. Admittedly, critical mass in this sense may be still far off.

While it's still very much open to debate about when and how the Internet will approach critical mass, the consequences this will have is, as Joe Burns of the HTML Goodies site explained in a recent commentary on the issue, dependent on your initial view of the Internet.

Generally, for those who view the Internet primarily as a place for commerce, critical mass would seem like a good thing (at first). According to Burns, once the user base stops growing it will settle itself into a group of people than can be generally described in demographics and psychographics; in turn, services can be created specifically for them. Hence, when the "playing field" won't change so often those already on the Internet will be better served.

In addition to this, Burns speculates that Internet hardware might be able to be formatted knowing the web's top end, so that all those that want to be attached can be attached. Usage levels of many sites would top off so that the hardware would know what it was up against and could be configured for it. "As a result," concludes Burns, "the blast of users that shut down a system might never happen again."

Another good thing is that since the audience can now be described in terms of somewhat stable demographics and psychographics, new software can be tailored to meet demands more successfully. In conjunction with this, Internet services would become more geared to the user because those providing the service knows that they must hold onto those who they already have visiting rather than knowing there's always someone else coming.

Not only are there many who accept these positive implications to critical mass, some have even become impatient with the present and are already living in the future. They have had enough of the initial information revolution and are already defining the next one (see "The second internet revolution" by John Harlow and Dipesh Gadher The Sunday Times).

To this extent, they claim that we have already turned the corner; we may not know exactly how or when, but the revolution people keep talking about has already been left to history (see "The Dawn of E-Life" article, published by Newsweek, on The Internet Times Newsletter, 1 October 1999 issue glreach.com/eng/ed/it.html).

Not everyone, however, is so optimistic about the future, not to mention the present. For those who regard the Internet foremost as a place for free expression and a free exchange of ideas, critical mass is often viewed as a bad thing, for no new people means no new ideas. A lack of growth will not only mean less diversity of ideas, but in order for the Internet to continue to better itself and its content, new people must come into the fold.

Thus, while some may see various implications of critical mass, such as the standardization of advertising rates and costs, as a positive development, others see this exact same condition not as progress but as a step backward. Critical mass is potentially negative for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Smaller sites that cater to a small slice of the user pie will have a hard time growing as they will now need to take audience from other sites rather than procure new users from those coming into the fold.

Similarly, with no new people coming to the Internet to start their own business, the monoliths that already have a virtual presence will then go unchallenged. Ultimately, users won't have a choice in many services and with no new growth -- once the little guy is put out of business, with no one else coming from behind -- legal monopolies will start to pop up all over the Internet.

In the end, there is no way to tell for certain what critical mass will entail for Internet. One thing, however, is for sure: it will be a far different place than it is now.