Media Dealmakers Summit: "The Web Is Dead"

There was a question during the morning session at the DeSilva + Phillips Media Dealmakers Summit that crystallized what a lot of people are thinking about the future. "Are tablets and e-readers the future of media?" For George F. Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, the answer was simple: "Yes. These devices are the nexus of media."

The question came from Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, media editor of the Financial Times, who was moderator of a panel called "Tablets, E-Readers and the Future of Media." He posed it to three panelists: Colony; John Ridding, CEO of the Financial Times; and Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR. While Colony's response raised a few eyebrows, considering his audience was largely print-based media company executives and their financial sponsors, and considering that Forrester is one of the world's best-respected technology forecasting firms, it got even more provocative from there. Not only are tablets the future, Colony said, but "We think the Web is dead." It may always be there, he said, but it's not the future. Nor are e-readers-devices like Amazon's Kindle. "There's one advantage to those things and that's that they can be read on the beach. That's not enough." If the Web is dead, what's rising, Colony said, is "the "app Internet." And that's where media companies need to focus themselves strategically. The need to de-emphasize their HTML skills and become app-Internet developers-for tablets and smart phones alike. "That's the most important thing," Colony said.