Kenneth Auchenberg on how the web has changed

Thank you. So the next speaker, he's a really smart guy. He has been pushing the limits for what you can do in a web browser by building a product where you can actually do video conferencing in a web browser. He has also been pioneering some really interesting concepts for how you can debug code for front-end developers, something that has later been implemented by the Mozilla organization in the Firefox browser. And last but not least, he has also been the co-organizer of a really cool conference called CodeFront that has really put Copenhagen on the map in the front-end community. So yeah, everybody knows him probably. His name is Kevin Augenberg. Kevin Augenberg, CEO, CodeFront This microphone doesn't work. I guess I can swap here. Let's start. Okay. This clicker works. So hey, everyone. I'm here to talk about the web. So before I begin, I would like to know how many of you are actually some sort of engineer. So I see a few hands being raised. This talk is not going to be particularly technical. But what I want to talk about is how the web has changed. So all of us, at least many of us in this room, are born and raised with the web being text documents. Text documents is something that we use to browse Wikipedia. It's something, at least in the original way the web worked, is about text documents. The browser used to be like a document reader. But the reality is today, that has changed. So what we are seeing here is basically that the web is actually an application runtime. If you look at how we actually use the web and how you use your computers today, you're using applications. You're using applications like Netflix. One interesting fact was like 50% of all Americans after 6 PM in the evening is watching Netflix, either on their laptop or on some mobile device. And what's also interesting when you look at how the web has changed from being a document reader to an application runtime is also the devices that we're using each and every day has also changed. So there's probably some of you in this room that have had a good old Lenovo laptop. This is how many people have been born and raised with the web. But the reality is that the people that grow up today is being born with mobile devices. All of us have some sort of mobile device and we have a tablet. But the really interesting things is when you talk about the Internet is also how Internet adoption has changed. So when we look at Internet adoption, it also has a lot of the demographics. And kind of what we tend to forget here in Little Copenhagen, especially in Europe, is that the world's population is changing quite dramatically. So you probably, many of you have seen this circle before. There's more people living inside this region than the rest of the world. And if you haven't seen this before, this is quite stunning. But what's more interesting is also when you look at like Internet usage. So last year, China actually surpassed the EU population in terms of online Internet users. And this is really, really interesting when you're a tech startup and if your home market is Copenhagen. Or Denmark for that matter. That's so much more you can target if you start to get a bit louder out of your box. The other interesting thing is that because of these new people are going online, also see that devices that they're using are also changing. So what we're seeing here is a comparison of the device used between Android and iPhones of Facebook users. In Delhi, the majority is Android devices. In San Francisco, of course, it's iPhone. But the interesting thing is that when we look at the new people that are going online every month, we have more people going online every month than the population of Denmark. And when they're going online, it's not online on an iPhone. It's on some cheap knockoff Android phone because they cost 40 bucks. And this is really interesting to put in perspective when you're building your business. A really interesting thing also is to look at, for example, a market like India. Where the majority of the people in the world are going online. They use headsets from manufacturers that most of you probably don't know. It's a different kind of world in terms of hardware. It's a different reality you need to relate to. Another interesting thing is also when we look at browser stats, that the browsers that we use today has also changed. Actually, there's probably a browser up here, a UC browser, that has more users globally than Safari mobile. Most of you probably didn't know about that. Most of you know about UC browsers. What we're also seeing here is that the browsers we know, the way we use them has changed. And my bet here is that in just a few years, the people that are going online for the first time, they don't know that it's a browser they're using. What you're using each and every day, you don't know is a browser. And what do I actually mean by that? We've seen some trends here that the browser technology, because it's now an application runtime, is being embedded inside other applications. So on Pinterest, when you click on a link with Chrome custom tabs, you see a website but you don't have a URL bar. You see the same on Safari with web applications now being a native application like. What we're also seeing is Google pushing a new thing called progressive web applications that allows you to go to a website and it automatically is being promoted to your home screen. So suddenly there's no app store. You just went to a website and suddenly it's on your home screen. These things are happening. What we're also seeing is basically the whole variable movement, that a website today can make a push notification directly. You can write that with JavaScript, but you're not writing HTML or CSS anymore, but you're just doing a notification. One of the other interesting things that we're also having here in this new world is also a new browser wall. So traditionally when we have been looking at browsers, we tend to have been focusing like this. This is a platform and this is a browser that's supported. But a browser is so much more conceptually than the traditional browsers we're seeing today. It's actually the real battle here is not like what browsers are given platform support. What everyone is fighting about now is everyone wants to be the next browser. What do I mean by that? This is basically how traditionally you've been viewing the world. You have web and you have the native platforms. But it's much more complicated than that. Because if you look at the immediate benefits of the web right now, this is basically a conversion funnel. So if you click on a link and basically you can do a conversion funnel, you can do a conversion funnel. You can do a post in an app. What you're seeing now is that when you install a native application, there's a huge drop-off rate. What the web can do right now is that because there's no app store and no install flow, people tend to convert better. But the interesting thing is that this is changing with native too. Native app stores will go away. You can deep link directly into applications. So what does that mean for the web? And this is how we have been thinking about the web, that the web has been a meta platform running on top of the existing operating systems. But really, the real world is different. Because what we're seeing in Asia, what we're seeing all over the world is that there's a whole new rise of new meta platforms that want to be the new browser. So if you think of it, what's happening in China with WeChat, WeChat is a major application platform where there's hundreds of billions or millions of users that can order taxis, pay for their rent, and do all these things. And they're essentially a browser. When you go to your Facebook stream. You click on an article. It's basically a browser for the internet. We're seeing this whole new category of browsers and new platforms being built. And what it ultimately comes down to is basically content platforms. Because that's ultimately what the internet has been about, delivering content. And what we're seeing now is a new browser world that is basically no longer about technology, but it's about being relevant and having that platform where you can deliver your content. So the reality is that when you're building a business, you need to relate to the content. You need to relate to what is WeChat doing? How can I reach my Chinese users? What can I do on the Facebook platform? And the really interesting bit here is that when we talk about the new web, we're now in a situation where everything is in flux. When I say I installed an app on my Android phone, I actually don't know what that will mean in two, five years' time. Because what is an app if it's just a website? What if you click on a link that suddenly is on your home screen? What device am I using? Am I using a Google Chrome? Am I using a glass HoloLens? Am I using a watch? What all these primitives and all these things that we've kind of gotten used to and kind of what we're thinking are really changing. And the platforms that we're targeting, if you're building a business and you're doing your iPhone app, that's really great for Silicon Valley. But if you're targeting China, maybe you need to build your app for WeChat. And kind of my message here with this really, really short lightning talk is basically take a step back. When you're building your tech startup and think about who your customers really are. What segment are you targeting? What technology are you using? Because we tend to look around and say, okay, he's having an iPhone, he's having an Android phone. But the reality is that it's much more complicated. And there's so much more change that you need to relate to. So if you're just building an iPhone app, it's really great for your Silicon Valley friends. But it's not so good for that Indian that is going online in a month or just went online. And that's basically what I want to talk about. So thank you.