1. A Verb-al
Ciaran Norris
30/10/2013
History Of The
Web
Background
in the mid-noughties Google’s B2B marketing material consisted of one claim: that their name had
made the fastest ever transition from a noun to a verb. They were probably right but they aren’t
alone; a select number of companies have seen their names become synonymous with the web, or a
part of it. And by tracing the history of those brands we can learn some interesting things about
how the web is used and what consumer brands can learn from them.
Details/Implications
Back in the late 90s the web, for many people, could be boiled down to one word: Hotmail. Email
was and still is the main thing that people used the internet for. But as time went on, to google
something became a more common refrain and highlighted how the web had changed.
There aren’t many other internet brands who have made this transition: YouTube, Facebook, Skype,
Instagram and perhaps a handful of others. Of the current breed of web and mobile start-ups
Snapchat stands out as a product whose name could soon come to be shorthand for its features, as
perhaps does Uber.
When you look at what unites nearly all of these services, from Hotmail to Google, Skype to
Snapchat, it’s that they provided a product or service which was, is or became a kind of utility.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long talked of his product as a “social utility” and
recently made that point again:
“Maybe electricity was cool when it first came out, but pretty quickly people stopped talking about
it because it’s not the new thing, the real question you want to track at that point is are fewer
people turning on their lights because it’s less cool? ”
Whilst some of the companies mentioned might not appear at first glance to be utilitarian, such as
YouTube or Instagram, it is what they have become in the minds of millions of their users, tools to
watch videos and take photos. But the rise of these utili-tainment companies shows how the web
has become a place for entertainment as well as information, driven particularly by the rise of
smart-phones and tablets.
This desire to be and focus on becoming a utility was summed up by the co-founder of Twitter,
Evan Williams, when he said that the secret to success on the internet was in giving people what
they have always wanted - convenience:
If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making
things fast and not making people think.

2. Instagram,
Ciaran Norris
30/10/2013
Twitter & Native
Brand Ads
Some brands are learning this lesson and working to become or provide utilities themselves. Think
Nike and its Nike+ and Fuelband products; UK supermarket Tesco’s mobile app which makes
shopping as simple as scanning a barcode; Domino’s pizza tracking service. Think Michelin’s
Restaurant Guide, published since 1920. This isn’t new, it’s just more urgent than ever as
competition for attention grows and grows.
Summary
The web has made two things paramount for success; utility or entertainment. Very few brands can
create truly entertaining content, so they should all try hard to provide utility, because it could be
the only thing separating them from their competitors or commoditised own-brands.