We spend a lot of time working in or evangelizing the virtual online and the future of the 3D Web. We have already made the jump beyond the snags that catch most people. What is really holding the average person back from enjoying virtual online experiences? It is not just one hot issue that is holding back the revolution for the 3D Web. There are a set of interconnected problems blocking people from enjoying this brave new frontier online, that pretty much all need to be solved at once. Although I would say that in my list below that the first two are most urgent and solving them gives some uplift to users and might encourage them to have hope.
Getting people to pay for content is the major focus for online. The Financial Times is taking a big lead in this area with more than 120,000 paying customers forking out £4 a week = £500k/week revenues . They claim to have 1.9 million registered users as well.
One of the biggest distinctions between the future of what users will want to do on the internet from what they did or in fact are doing now, is the difference between being passive viewers and active participants. Old Media doesn't get this important orientation on how it needs to treat its audience. Imagine a bar where you could only talk to the bartender? It is like the mentality of the Economist to set a paywall for their content and beg for their "loyal" customers to pay.
I think about the future of media, technology so much that I worry that I think the present is the past. But check a LED tv playing a Blu-ray disc and immediately you will see that the future is now here (and can be delivered to your home by Amazon).
The Economist, who runs Drupal like we do as their core CMS btw, sent me an email today explaining the free access to their site will change dramatically on October 13th.
