Hey guys, welcome to welcome back to big tech on point #btop I’m Johno The Coder, and I’m here to tell you why the internet is dead.
Now it’s a bit of a drastic kind of sweeping statement, but let’s kind of delve into what I mean there . And what I really mean is that websites are dead. They’re not pointless, and we’re gonna go into that in a minute. But , um, the internet and websites, they’re just not as important as they used to be.
Not that long ago, you went and you bought yourself a .com and that was it. You had a business and you were gonna be an overnight success and all the rest of it. And that’s just not the case anymore. And I don’t know , well , we’ll rewind. We’ll go back in history just a little bit. And I remember when I first got involved in the automotive industry, I used to be involved with kind of like modified cars and stuff.
At the time forms were the thing. If you were a car club, you had a forum that was that you couldn’t be a car club. If you didn’t have a forum . And we look at now just to look at that kind like micro industry, that’s completely changed. Now, if you’ve got an Instagram page, you’ve got a face , the group, that’s it. You could be a club. That’s all you need. You don’t need a website anymore. You don’t need to go to that expense. You don’t need a webmaster . You don’t need any , any of that stuff.
So that’s kind of what I mean by the internet is kind of dead , but you do still need a website. It just serves a very different purpose and actually it’s more cost effective purpose realistically. So the purpose of your website now is social proof because to look legitimate, you do need a website, even if it is just a one pager that says who you are and links off to elsewhere. It’s kind of a consolidated point of contact to your other platforms. It’s almost the way that you put your badge on your socials and say, yeah , this is actually me.
But that brings me to my next point. The next point is you can’t exist anymore without socials. If you don’t have socials, you don’t exist. Really. And we used to talk about how, you know, Google’s super important and , and Google is still super important. Well, all search engines are, but Google has obviously the , the biggest share. You really only can’t exist now without Facebook, or depending on what you’re doing, you need LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or any of those other platforms, but you need to be on socials that is far more important now to have in a website.
Now there’s ways that those social platforms can be run quite professionally and they can look really quite good. And there’s ways that those platforms can be run that does doesn’t look professional . And I’m talking about things like you’re setting up page for your business, make it a page. You know, the one where you click the like button, not a user account where you just sign up for a new account. There’s 101 reasons maybe I’ll cover ’em in a different chat, but that’s not today. So you need socials. You need somewhere that your reviews go, that you don’t own, trust pilots, the one of immediately Springs to mind, I love Trustpilot.
We’ve also got Facebook reviews and Google reviews and all of that stuff is gonna have a much bigger impact on your customers. Assume you’ve got customers or prospective students or whoever it is that you need, that your website would be for those profiles need to be up to date . They need to have the information that’s really where people are gonna look. As I say, the website really serves this kind of social proof purpose. Now your website is something that people, when they Google you, you want that to come up. It’s your brand name, they’ve Googled. You know, if you Google Johno the Coder , I would look really hope that my website comes up first. Um , and if you do blog and you share that kind of stuff, or if you are a website, you know, if your whole business is your website, then obviously this doesn’t really apply to you as much. But if you are anything else, you really, your website needs to point people in the direction of platforms that are easy for you to update and where people can discover you . I , and I’m good .
There is another episode that I’ve got lined up that really talks about the value proposition of those big platforms, even if you don’t want to use them. Um , but as I say, reviews, they’re much more valuable being on Google or Facebook or Trustpilot or any of those websites. If you’ve got a community, I mentioned forums, you know, realistically, it’s not gonna your community. Isn’t probably gonna exist on your website anymore, unless you’ve got an app and stuff, and you’ve gone to that level of engagement. It’s probably gonna be on your socials or places like patron or clubhouse or Facebook supporters or only fans or discord or slack. If you’re in this kind of text sphere, I know Slack’s quite popular there. If you’re a gamer, it’s gonna be discord. If you’re a streamer, it be Twitch. That’s where your community’s gonna live. It’s not gonna live on your website anymore, but you can survive without a website. It’s just a bit more treacherous because as I say, especially if you’re asking people to part with money, it’s a little bit different. Um , if what you are asking people to part with is some subscriptions on Twitch, you don’t need as much because you’ve kind of got that at trust with Twitch. You’ve probably got your stream history and stuff like that. If you’re asking people to part , with money on an e-commerce perspective, you’re probably gonna have a much better chance of doing that.
If you are on say Amazon or eBay or somewhere where you’ve got like a seller history, you’ve got all that information, your website, and some reviews that anyone could write and just pop on there. Aren’t gonna be as valuable. I’m not gonna go into of the argument of , um , you know, the reviews can be fake and stuff. That’s a whole different conversation. Maybe we’ll line that up for a , for an episode in the future. Um , however, the website isn’t that important anymore, it is still important. I don’t want to say it’s not important, but it’s not as important as those social profiles. The thing that is really, really important though, that has never cost value that will continue to gain value. Is your domain name? What I mean by your domain name is for me. It’s John O the code UK. Okay. So the reason that’s important is Google will link that and it will link it to your social profiles and you can do all sort of stuff with Google my business. And that’s your kind of , to quote, another podcast, The Disruptive Entrepreneur. He talks about digital real estate as a , a guy called Rob Moore . He talks about “digital real estate”. Your domain name is that, and you need that, and you especially want that for your brand. If you can get it to match with your social handles.
That’s great. So if you’ve got, or I’ve got , @JohnoTheCoder on most social platforms, and then JohnoTheCoder.uk , ’cause I’m in the UK, if you can’t tell by me accent, that real estate’s really important, ’cause it helps add to the authenticity and the value and the kind of social proof of the brand. The other really important thing is your corporate email because for me person, nothing quite looks as unprofessional as mybusiness@gmail.com .
For me, it’s just not ideal if I’m trying to part with money or I wanna deal with something in a kind of seemingly professional way, I would much rather email someone@mybusiness.com. It also, the other thing that is kind of handy with domains and , and you do get it on social platforms as well is you can see when it was really registered . So it’s a really quick way when you’re trying to avoid scams online, a really good way of doing it is looking at when was this domain registered. Cause if everyone was registered three days ago and they’re asking you to make a 1500 quit purchase, that looks a little bit dodgy. If you can see that my domain’s been registered for six years or however long it is that does help add to this kind of verifiable proof that you exist.
You are who you say you are and stuff like that. Um , but the other important thing that domain allows you to do is Sub domains. And if you’re using anything like click funnels or , um, mostly e-commerce platforms or any thing like that, they’ll allow you to usually to route stuff to a sub domain . And when I talk about domains, I mean something like blog dot , my website.com and this , the blog.is the sub domain there. The reason that’s really important is because it officially and verifiably ties , whatever that thing is, whatever that platform is, it ties it to your domain. So you’ve got website.com.
Now you’ve got shop.website.com that goes off to your eCommerce provide or somewhere like that. You’ve got community dot and that goes off to your Kajabi or wherever it is that you are , you’re sending those users. And that is handy, cuz that a is good for your users. It’s valuable for them. It helps them remember things. They can go to website.com and get all the links they want. So the domain is still really important because it gives you all of this authenticity and this verifiable good stuff around your brand and your business.
But as we know now, businesses can be born and they can exist solely on socials. It’s entirely possible, especially, you know, even if your e-commerce, you can exist now without having a website, you can sell exclusively through eBay and Amazon. And I’m sure there’s a hundred others where you can ship your stuff on E even if you’re a drop shipper , you can do it like that. And you can just sell through those platforms and there’s companies that will help you do that as well. But the domain still is important in those scenarios, if for nothing else, but for a website that they can Google you and find you. And it links off to your trust, pilot and everywhere else, which is great. But for that domain email, for the customer services, that my super shop.com or whatever it is, that’s what your domain is valuable for. So the internet is kind of, the internet is kind of dead in terms of you don’t actually need to part with any money. You can go and set up all these social profiles for free there’s features and stuff, obviously that you’d have to pay for.
But for the most part, you could go and set up your brand, set up a Facebook page, a Twitter page, an Instagram page and Etsy go and sell on Etsy. Happy days, all done. You don’t need the website, but the domain is still valuable. And I don’t wanna say you don’t need a website is handy to have a website, especially if you’re gonna go and do things like get business cards printed.
You’re gonna want a corporate email address or not a corporate email address, but you’re gonna want an email address tied to your domain. You’re gonna want the website on there with your social handles. And when you go to the website, you want the website to kind of bring the story of all the platforms together, because if you’re using social media properly, the story you tell on Facebook should be a bit different to the story. Tell Instagram, that should be a bit different to what you talk about on Twitter. And that should be slightly different to what you talk about on TikTok and your website kind of ties all of those things together so that if I discover you in one place and I just Google you, I can get to your website and that links you off to everything else. And to be honest, actually I forgot what they’re called. All my links do quite a good job of doing out as well, because they’ve realized that a lot of the things we use our websites for actually just linking people to all of our platforms. So all my links then goes and does that for, I think it’s called all my links, but they go and do that for you. And they, they would allow you to kind of add and categorize and everything, your links. So they realized the value proposition of your website really was just a place to share your links to socials. Cause those platforms are more important.
Now, when you do have a website, although depending on what you’re doing, it’s probably gonna be a lot simpler. Now it’s gonna do a lot less. You’re gonna leverage all of these other partners to do the things that they do really well and allow them to do it. It definitely needs to work on mobile. That is far more important because someone says, oh, have you heard about the Acme technology core ? They went and did my website for on me and they just Google it on their phone there. And then, and they find your website. So it needs to be fast . It needs to be mobile friendly, but that is why I think the internet or at least the decentralized internet is basically dead. Now. Thank you very much for listening. I’m Johno the Coder #btop big tech on top at Johno the Coder on socials. And I will see you next time.