作者介绍：
Steve Harmon是美国风投创始人和管理合作伙伴，曾担任过Jupiter Media公司VP，Paul Kagan Associates机构分析师，他的创业企业Applied Semantics在2003年被谷歌收购，是谷歌Adsense概念创造者之一。现着重投资互联网领域，对中国互联网和网络新媒体有深刻研究。他写的《零重力1.0》和《零重力2.0》成为彭博社最畅销书籍，比尔盖茨、杨致远也读过他写的商业报告。
社交网络是一种自助心理分析，分享本我、自我和超我。
但是我们真正想要的是：“相关网”。这是正在来临的现实。你应当了解。
在展望未来之前还是让我们回顾历史。
1994年的雅虎，当时雅虎用的还是斯坦福大学的服务器
1994年雅虎出现时，当时的互联网还很容易归类。所有的网站都可以轻松地用一页地址簿记录下来。这帮助了雅虎成为王者。杨致远和费罗正在读电子工程学的博士，建立该网站只是出于业余喜好，而网站也是位于斯坦福大学的网站 akebono.stanford.edu的目录下。杨致远和费罗两人声称当时有23836个链接。这就是1994年的雅虎。
那时候没有垃圾邮件，没有弹出广告，也没有网络销售，甚至也不需要服用“伟哥”。我记得那是网络的一个美好时光，整齐、简洁，就像一个图书馆。
在1996年春季雅虎上市的时候，它是大部分网民使用的网站。AOL还是一个在线信息服务的提供商，而美国乃至全世界很大程度也并未与网络相连。
那时的苹果正以AOL为目标，并推出了自己的在线服务eWorld。我当时有幸它的首批用户，不过可笑的是原来eWorld中的e是empty（空白）的意思，因为根本没人使用它。
1994年eWorld的早期在线服务
1996年，AOL开始想美国家庭大量投递印有其logo的3.5英寸软盘，促使其注册用户数量攀升，股票价格大涨。是的，当时软件是最主要的工具，还有9600波特拨号调制解调器。
3年后，AOL收购了时代华纳（Time Warner），并要抢走华德·斯特恩(Howard Stern)的“媒体之王（king of all media）”的称号。
另外还有Pointcast，当年最受欢迎的单一在线服务。安装这个软件之后，它会全天候向你发送与你选择话题有关的新闻。很多IT经理都不喜欢这个软件，因为它占用太多带宽了。Pointcast可以称得上是1996年的Twitter。
下面来看看1995年亚马逊“开张”时候的样子吧
亚马逊首个主页
上述很多的网站或服务现在已经不再是网络的“热点”或者使用最多的了。但亚马逊是一个特别的例外，它的顾客越来越多，服务范围也越来越广。
今天，网络由谷歌、Twitter和Facebook把持，但明天他们未必还是王者。我认为我们现在正处于另一个转折点，因为现在的网络过于凌乱，谷歌搜索的结果没有03年那么准确了，Twitter充斥着垃圾信息，Facebook也被冒充 “近况更新”的游戏广告所占据。现在的网络和电子媒体正面临一个前所未有的巨大的转折点。下一代的网络将与“相关性”有关。但现在很少有公司意识到这点。
网络发展简史：
万维网（World Wide Web）（1993-1995）
专业内容网（Professional Content Web）(1996-2003)
社交网（Social Web）(2003-20??)
相关网（Relevant Web）（20??-20??）
网络、媒体、销售和企业将不得不作出大的调整以成为“相关网”的一部分。网络上有太多的信息，而且过于杂乱，人们根本无法消化。这已经超越了语言学的范畴，真正关联的是信息和数据的意识。更少意味着相关，这是关键。没有人有时间去检查状态更新看谁午餐吃了什么，没有人有时间去细看邮箱里的垃圾邮件，没有人有时间去上传自己院子的照片，没有人有时间去想如何才能把自己的信息缩减到140K字节， 没有人有时间去Buzz。
以下为英文全文：
The Relevant Web: Need To Know
The history of the Web until now has been about the blocking and tackling of information. Porting offline to online. Yada yada yada.
Social web is kind of a self psycho-analysis sharing of id, ego and super ego.
But what we all really want is this: The Relevant Web. It’s coming now. What you NEED to know.
But let’s see where we’ve been before we get to the future.
Yahoo 1994 when it was hosted at Stanford's server
In 1994 when Yahoo debuted the Web was easy to tally. So many sites all fit nicely into a directory of links. It’s what made Yahoo king. The Web was a hobby, its directory hosted at akebono.stanford.edu where Jerry and David played hooky from their electrical engineering studies. The Web according to Jerry Yang and David Filo was 23,836 links. Here’s Yahoo in 1994:
And it worked. This was before spam. Before advertising. There was nothing to sell and no Viagra to take. I remember it was a great time for the Web, neat and orderly, like a library. In fact, Jerry and David were basically librarians. They used to be speakers at librarian conferences.
By the time Yahoo went public in April 1996 it was the Web to most people. AOL was still a proprietary online service, closed garden, and hadn’t yet discovered mass mailing disks to every home in America. America, and the world, was not online to any large degree.
This was round about the time Apple decided it wanted to be AOL and launched its own closed online service called eWorld. I was one of the first to subscribe and the joke soon became that the ‘e’ in eWorld stood for “empty” since nobody used it. You’d enter the town square and talk to yourself. Echo.
eWorld 1994 - Apple's early online service
By 1996 AOL began mass mailing sign up disks (3.5″ floppy) to every home in America, prompting a surge in its sign ups and boost in its stock. Yes, floppy disks ruled the day, as did 9600 baud dial up modems.
AOL floppy sign up disk
Just 3 years later AOL would go on to acquire Time Warner and proclaim itself “king of all media”, dethroning Howard Stern.
Other early rockets were Pointcast which was more popular than any other single service online. You installed it and it sent you news all day on topics of your choice. Its launch was standing-room only and most IT manager hated it since it hogged their bandwidth. Pointcast was the Twitter of 1996.
Ten years away from profits here’s how Amazon looked when it first debuted:
Amazon's first home page
There are many more examples. Most of the above are no longer the “hottest” or most used sites or services on the Web today. Amazon is a notable exception, based on its customer service and expansion.
So today as Google rules, Twitter tweets, Facebook fawns the fact is that these companies may not be the winners tomorrow. I’d say we’re at another turning point when the big Web is just too cluttered, Google results aren’t very accurate as they were in 2003, Twitter is being overcome by spam, and Facebook has been invaded by gaming ads disguised as “status updates”.
We are at a turning point in the Web and digital media. Bigger than before. The next Web is about relevance. And few companies today deliver anything close to that.
Evolution of the Web:
The World Wide Web (1993-1995)
The Professional Content Web (1996-2003)
The Social Web (2003-20??)
The Relevant Web (20??-20??)
Web, media, retail and other companies today are going to have to make major adjustments to become part of the “relevant Web”. There’s simply too much information flow and clutter for people to digest any more. It’s beyond semantics, it’s awareness of information and data.
Less is more and less means relevance is key. Especially with mobile. Nobody has time to filter through status updates on who’s having what for lunch. Nobody has time for an inbox of spam. Nobody has time for uploading photos of their front yard. Nobody has time for wondering how to keep their message under 140k. Nobody has time for buzz. It’s all the rattle and hum of information without relevance attached.
u2 Rattle and Hum movie poster
Information ABOUT information is the future. Veins of gold in the hillsides of earthen dust.
The relevant Web is here and growing… first a trickle and then a downpour.