Social Networking Bucks Design Trend

Mashable reports that the number of searches for both “web hosting” and “hosting” on Google  has decreased rapidly in the past few years.

Similarly searches for “web design”  are on an even sharper decline, whilst “photo sharing” and “video sharing” are doing better than ever, and “social networking” you guessed it, is on an even steeper incline.

All this seems to suggest a major shift towards Web 2.0 in the way people are using the internet. Ten years ago if you wanted any kind of online presence you would need a web host and a designer. Now, you have a whole host of options without ever having to worry about web hosting. Want to create a gallery? Flickr. Blog? Wordpress. Post videos? Youtube. Web hosting is there, somewhere underneath it all, but you don’t need to worry about it – just like you don’t have to worry about having electricity.

This doesn’t mean that these services are no longer needed; it merely means that the majority of users don’t need to know about them, just like they don’t need to know about the intricacies of the way their 16 valve car engine burns fuel. On the Internet, however, these large scale changes are happening faster than in other industries; if you’re building an Internet business, you better be willing to adapt fast.