Hi all,
What will the web look like if these LLM bots become users' primary interface (rather than traditional websites)?
Do the majority of websites disappear?
Will monetized MCP servers become a new version of websites?
Are mobile apps even more critical now, as the app store is the last place for discovery?
Curious to hear your predictions, worries, or hopeful takes!
I run a book discovery website (https://shepherd.com) where people share books they love, and we try to unearth great books people haven't heard about. We've seen our traffic from Google drop massively as Google replaces search results with its AI chatbot. We get direct traffic from our fans, but without Google introducing us to new people, I'm worried there won't be any discovery. As a result... I'm working to launch a mobile app with a full reader app.
Any advice for me?
Seems like search will disappear completely. I used ChatGPT to find a coffee table that was exactly 58-inches long (and iirc with other characteristics), google search and amazon/wayfair internal search had completely failed at this task. I wonder can you replicate your site with AI -- ie. prompt like "I'm a person like this A,B,C looking for a book like this X,Y,Z"...
It will become much more walled garden, I think we will see a rejection of the algorithms and we will get content more from communities than ad's tracking you and serving you up content. I think the web is going to look alot like it was before Facebook with Forums etc but these will be slack channels/discord groups.
The rest of the web will just be an uncharted landscape, I'm looking forward to Stumbleupon making a comeback.
I am disgusted with book categories on the website. No math books, programming books, philosophy books, etc but there are so many categories of not worth to read. I did not even expect the year is important metrique for somebody.
The underlying commercialization of the Web is too lucrative to be gone in 5 years, it's just a question of what watering holes the non-dead congregate at, and how the predators target them.
At this point, I'd expect a further move towards walled gardens to reduce competition (harder to scrape, copy, etc.) and increase the barrier for entry to new players: it's going to be even more pay to play than it is now.
I don't expect the Web to die, websites will stay a thing, but how they are discovered and used will undoubtedly shift. E.g., relying on tricks to get search traffic is a waste of time if nobody uses search.
Hopeful take: other protocols take more prominence. Disruptions and a fracture or two might help the Internet stay useful.