The tech sphere can be a fickle one. One moment an app or service is sitting pretty at the top of the charts, being talked about across every social media platform, and then next it has disappeared. Its usefulness now vanquished to the pits of the tech basement, no longer part of the digital landscape. The online graveyard is full of websites, services, and practices, that were once almost ubiquitous in their use, but every now and then, some of these technologies and services rise once again, as if resurrected from their resting places and returned to their former glory. Three such areas of tech that have been revitalized in recent times are video conferencing, mobile gaming, and web sites!
The Evolution of the Website
Websites were all the rage at the dawn of the internet era. If you didn’t have a website, you had zero presence on the web, and as such, building a website was at the forefront of any new business venture worth its salt. While these early websites weren’t as pretty as their modern-day counterparts, they did what they had to do. They provided a place for potential customers to frequent and view a service or product.
Fast forward a few years, and with the advent of social media platforms, the emphasis had moved away from the website, and onto these new emerging heavyweight digital networks. Small businesses would ply their trade on Facebook or other social media platforms. While this works well to a degree, there are issues associated with selling your wares purely on social media platforms. If your platform of choice suddenly changes its terms of service, you can find yourself in a situation where you lose contact with your current and potential customer base. If you happen to have no website then there is nowhere else for these customers to go, should they wish to continue buying your product. Many companies have found this out at their peril, and as such, the website has very much come back into fashion, thanks to simple website builders, digital marketing guides and reliable web hosting companies.
Not only is there the ‘insurance policy’ associated with having a website, but the consumer has become far savvier to online scams than they were in previous years. Having a website gives a company an air of authenticity, and in turn, promotes a trustworthy associated brand. Lastly, the rise in simple ‘drag and drop’ website builders means that even the tech novice can build a professional-looking website, with no need for heavy coding knowledge, or expensive rental of professionals with the expertise.
In a Pandemic, Online Meetings are Vital
The rise in video conferencing is down to one rather obvious moment in recent history. The Covid-19 outbreak that began in January moved workers away from the bustling cities, into their home offices or onto their kitchen tables for their 9 to 5 workday. With teams now spread out and unable to meet face to face, video conferencing became the defacto way to catch up with the workforce and discuss plans of action. Not only that, with the various lockdowns around the world settling in, people turned to video chat applications as a way to replicate their Friday night socializing too.
Whilst this has become a rather normal way to interact with friends and work colleagues now, it is worth remembering that the idea of video chatting reached a sort of plateau just before the pandemic started, where the reality of video calling a friend was often looked at as an inconvenience. Now, video chatting is firmly back in the zeitgeist, with the likes of Zoom in particular adding substantial numbers to their market value, and other similar apps and services scrambling to add functionality to theirs, in a bid to become the ‘go-to’ app for remote working.
Gaming on the Go
There was a time when video game entertainment was solely done in front of a TV set, or desktop computer. Then, in the late 80s, Gameboy emerged. Seemingly overnight, this new gaming phenomenon took the world by storm, leading to a surge in interest for gaming on the go. Suddenly, any spare moment on a train journey, lunch break, or car journey could be used to escape into the world of video games. From the late 90s up until 2007 however, mobile gaming took a back seat to the more powerful consoles on the market, and PC gaming in general.
Whilst it never died, mobile gaming just wasn’t living up to the hype that the original Gameboy provided, and the industry stagnated slightly. With the release of the iPhone in 2007 however, mobile gaming returned to the forefront of entertainment, as casual games began to take over the market and dominate. Whilst not everyone was into the more ‘hardcore’ gaming options out there from Sony and Microsoft, casual gaming appealed to the masses, and has now ballooned into an industry of gigantic proportions. For those who thought simple, mobile gaming was dead, just take a look at the market value of mobile games, and the success of the Nintendo Switch.
So, in the cut-throat world of tech, it is possible for companies, services, apps, and hardware to be ‘down and out’ at one point, and then jump straight back to the echelons of popularity, providing that the conditions are right, the product has a reason to exist, and the results or experience is tangible. Some tech will always go the way of the dodo, but resurrections are not impossible, and sometimes, it is possible to come back stronger than ever before.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.