Digital natives

Twenty-one years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee radically altered the world's virtual landscape with his invention of the World Wide Web, the internet itself is poised for its own sweeping transformation that will personalise everyday life in ways never imagined.

And, rather than the web browser being celebrated as the culmination of human achievement by Generation X, it will be looked back on by the next wave of young digital natives born after 1990 as the end of the beginning — a time when the .com years of internet infancy gave way to direct personal internet applications that enrich lives lived exceedingly on the fly.

Adrian Kinderis, Chief Executive Officer of AusRegistry International based in Melbourne, Australia, said the web and its millions of web pages are no longer cutting edge for young twenty-somethings who want relevant internet platforms that are directly accessible.

Young users want applications that securely recognise personal users instantly and offer intelligent services tailored to the ficklest of preferences, said Kinderis, whose company helped the UAE implement its .ae and Arabic .emarat domain names. "By 2020, what we want to have generated is completely intuitive for all users who will surf instead of search," Kinderis said in a conversation with Gulf News. "Digital natives will go where they want, then they want and how they want whether that is via a laptop to mobile phone."

Businesses that miss the bus on the roll-out in coming years of industry-morphing trends and the emergence of new internet platforms risk losing the hard-fought battle to win and retain a new breed of internet-savvy consumers.

For now, internet users are routinely logging via PCs and laptops on to giant e-gateways such as Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as part of an insatiable demand to be connected 24-7.

But for digital natives, Kinderis said, internet applications that can be seamlessly tapped via personal mobile devices such as smartphones, computer tablets and ebook readers will soon outpace standard portals on the web.

Primary tool

"Mobile devices will be the primary tool to the internet by 2013," he said.

Applications will be stitched into every waking moment of the day for users whose lives will be electronically shaped when they shop, socialise, work and explore the virtual world around them, Kinderis said.

"The digital native will demand to have full internet at their fingertips 24/7," said Kinderis. "There will be no chaff any more. ‘Your' web will be your entire experience, everything will be IP based. This is the next revolution — personalised delivery of the internet."

At a time when many major corporations are now only beginning to advertise heavily to capture, for example, 500 million Facebook adherents, Kinderis said entirely new electronic platforms are in the planning to reach out directly to young mobile users.

One of the biggest single game-changing events will be the addition of new personalised generic top-level domain names (Gltds) in 2011, no Google needed, he said.

"With the new Gltds, this is the end game as far as internet navigation is concerned," said Kinderis. "Next year when the doors open to applications for new domain names you'll see corporations embracing top-level names through dot-brand opportunities."

Bypassing .com websites to go directly to dot-company websites will be full of endless possibilities for corporations and other organisations that decide to spend the $195,000 (Dh716,061) application fee in the new year to apply for a new generic top-level domain name from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

Domain names

New domain names will be open to generic words, geographical places and, of course, corporations.

"This is a platform to reach out to digital natives, it's pure innovation. A digital native will expect this. If a bank, for example, doesn't do this, young users will go to one that will," he said. "This is more than a domain name and a website. The next evolutionary stage of the internet will be about these customised interactions. Whether it is a telco, bank or retailer, you will see everything customised to your needs."

To be more specific, young digital natives could ideally simply type into the internet address bar their name plus the dot and then the company or organisation they are seeking and they will automatically be directed to their personalised page hosted by the corporation.

When customers log directly from the address bar into a bank website, "all of a sudden, the bank can tell a customer personal stuff they need to know and securely".

Kinderis said the window for applying for the generic domain names will come some time in the first quarter of next year and last for about 45 days until the application process closes.

"This is critical real estate only being offered at one time. If companies don't have this, they will rely on a third .com party to do it for them," Kinderis said.

Icann, meanwhile, confirmed that it agreed at a special meeting in Norway in late September to new rules that address concerns about the expansion of Gltds such as "trademark protection, morality and public order, and vertical integration".

"The board made considerable progress on the remaining issues regarding new generic top-level domains, and has asked staff to prepare additional working papers and a modified generic top-level domain name [Geld] applicant guidebook for public review," said Peter Dentate Thrush, chairman of the board, in a statement.

A spring 2011 meeting in San Francisco will also touch on other issues such as competition, consumer protection, security, stability and resiliency, malicious abuse and rights protection, Icann said, "prior to opening up the application process for new Gtlds."