I think it's worth noting that most of those stories are random blog sites, which are kind of allowed (expected?) to post stupid, sensationalist stuff fairly regularly. The WIRED article was a cover story on a major technology publication, and went beyond opinion and used a totally misleading graph ( http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/is-the-web-really-de.ht... ). The WIRED article is a few levels above those links in terms of stupidity.
The chart Wired provides is nice, but doesn't really tell the full story. It doesn't tell the story they're writing, and it doesn't give enough information to really work out what's going on.
Looking at that chart, I do not see an increase in direct services traffic, such as the facebook apps they mention in the articles. I see an increase in Video traffic, specifically, eating up the other services. This is not the same thing. We need more information, anyway: is this video direct streaming? Is it video accessed over web sites like youtube? If the latter is the case, does it really count as a separate category? Why put services and types of content on the same graph, anyway?
It also doesn't tell the whole story. I'd like to see a similar chart of total data transfer. Obviously the total amount of Internet data transfer has skyrocketed over the same period, and we already know the way the proportions work out... But for all we know, web usage is growing in absolute terms. Maybe it's not growing as fast as video-specific web traffic, but it's still growing. Besides, technology to effectively store and transmit video in place in websites is relatively new. It should be no surprise that it's piece of the Internet pie is still growing!
Overall; kind of bullshit. I like the idea that non-http services are taking over the Internet, but the numbers Wired presents don't validate that one way or the other.
I can't believe people are still arguing about this. Wired made some bullshit graph, whatever, why do we need to prove them wrong? They have their opinion, and it's not going to kill the web itself, so let's just leave it at that.
This is precisely the reason why Wired wrote that article: They knew it would get them publicity, and that's what the "X is DEAD" articles are for. Just trolling.
The problem is the graph is beyond misleading, it is false. It purports to show a decline in web traffic, when what it really shows is a decline in web traffic relative to other protocols (including video, which is a further mistake since a lot of video often comes over the web, and can't be mutually exclusive as the graph presents it.)
In absolute terms however, the web is still growing, which is why it's not just a matter of opinion.
This has been posted before recently. The title is just something flashy to attract attention, but there is no real substance to the claim that the "web" is dead (let alone that everything is dead), it's just that the web is undergoing some logical transformations, as it evolves. Sounds to be like Wired is either becoming desperate for traffic, or it wants to become act more and more like a tabloid instead of an intelligent news source.
