The Internet we know and use is about 10 years old, but its origins stretch back a lot further than a decade. ARPANET, in fact, was first conceived in the mid ’60s. But the last 10 years have seen a business and social revolution that, because it is now so common, we tend to take for granted. However, as we detail in the Boom 2.0 story on page 32, the ’net is poised to be remade yet again. 
    New technologies will, of course, be a driving force of this renaissance, but just as significant will be the changing face of the online population. If you tend to picture ’net denizens as teenagers and, stereotypically, socially awkward males, update that to include grannies. Grannies with magic spells, fast cars and a range of powerful weapons. As early as last year, researchers noted that one in five computer gamers is 50 or older, a percentage that has doubled in five years. And the growth of that demographic is continuing. 
    “People used to think ‘Well, games are fine for youngsters,’ but now it is the gaming grannies who are driving a lot of online gaming,” said David Jacobson, director of technology in the advisory services group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Toronto. 
    Demographic change is also coming from the Internet’s most active arena: blogging. According to research firm Technocrati, one new blog is created every second worldwide. Overall, the blogosphere has grown 60 fold in three years. And who’s writing all those words? Often, it’s women. Survey numbers from Perseus Development show that 68 per cent of bloggers are female. Marketers and technology firms, having grown up in a rather male-dominated online business environment, may not be fully prepared for these new online consumers. As David Carter, once a Windows 95 product manager and now a maven at blog provider iUpload, dryly noted, “The sweet spot of the blog demographic is women between the ages of 18 and 35, and when has that ever been the sweet spot of the technology world?” 
    So smart businesses should get wise to this demographic shift, because this decade it may just be young women and seniors who define the new online cool.

Check out backbonemag.com

Our Web site has recently been revamped. We’ve added new sections and more content, updated the look and made it easier to navigate to the information you want. 
    One of the most exciting additions is online videos. In partnership with Chalk Media (www. chalktv.com), Backbone is now producing video segments linked to our magazine stories. Our first video expands on the ZATA story on page 28 of this issue. 
    The ZATA initiative addresses a core problem faced by the retail and restaurant industries of B.C.: how to benchmark against competitors. Typically, a business figured it was doing well if it made a profit, but had no way of quantitatively comparing its revenue, expenses or profit to the businesses around it. 
    ZATA now provides near real-time statistics to participating businesses. The technology behind this implementation is not groundbreaking, but its potential to improve business performance is. That makes it the perfect Backbone story and a good subject for our first video. To see the video click here.
    Stay tuned for future video segments, and check out the new backbonemag.com. We think you’ll like the change.

Peter Wolchak
Editor

pwolchak@backbonemag.com