I disagree.
I am in the midst of a long stew on the future of mobile, it’s taken me through deep links and intelligent links, to the future of search on mobile and beyond, and I’m nowhere near finished with either the reporting or the writing – so I can’t definitively counter the Journal’s argument – yet. But I feel it in my bones – apps, what I’ve disparagingly called “chiclets” – are not the model of how we will interact with information, services, or the world via mobile. The best of the web – open, low cost to entry, no gatekeepers, end-user driven, standards-based, universal namespace, etc. – will prevail.
Why am I so sure of this? Because just about every single person I’ve spoken to – some three dozen or so, to date – are convinced we’re in a secular shift from the app model to….something else, something new, something better. I had a great meeting today at the mobile search startup Jack, for example, with people who are super-qualified to have opinions on the matter (ex Facebook, Excite, Apple, et al, backed in a quiet $6mm round early this year by John Lilly and Reid Hoffman at Greylock). And they are not alone – the caliber of people I’ve encountered who share my point of view is extraordinary. Something big is brewing, and I’m deep into figuring out how to frame it. It’s a big story, and I don’t know if I can tell it as well as it deserves to be told. But I’m going to try, and if you’re reading this, well, it’s your job to course correct my attempts.
Stay tuned. The web as we knew it ten years ago may be “dead,” but its core values and framework are alive, kicking, and poised to once again disrupt the current oligarchs of mobile.