Why Apple's announcement confirms a new era of the internet

Apple’s expected announcement of a VR/XR headset - its first completely new product line since the Apple Watch was released in 2015 - is further evidence that we are now in a new era of the internet.

An era that currently looks to be defined by AI, VR/XR, streaming, algorithm-led content discovery, and blockchain-based community and collectibles.

The terms "web3" and "metaverse" have been thrown around and debated so much during the 2020s that they no longer have precise, universally agreed meanings. If they ever did.

To me web3 - like web2 before it - has always been a term to describe an era of the internet rather than specific things within that era. I wrote this article for SportBusiness in 2021 on what web3 might mean.

It is a useful term in that sense - because we can all agree that the digital media landscape looks very different now to even three years ago, at the start of this decade.

Here in IMG's digital team we advise sports rightsholders on how to adapt and prepare for changes in the technology sector, so they can continue to reach and engage more and more global fans.

The remainder of the 2020s and beyond will be an exhilarating time - far more so than the 2010s, and much more akin to what happened in the 2000s.

In 2024 it will be 20 years since Mark Zuckerberg invented ‘The Facebook' and fired the starting gun for what would become web2. In an amazing burst of innovation between 2004 and 2007, YouTube, Twitter, and the first iPhone all followed.

In just three years, we had changed forever the way we would access the internet and how we would use it.

I think something similar is happening now.

VR/XR headsets won't replace smartphones - just like smartphones didn't entirely replace laptops and monitors (just walk into any office). But just like smartphones did in the 00s, these headsets represent not just new hardware, but new ways to access software. Meta and Apple will both want to offer consumers apps to utilise within their headsets.

If the web3 era lasts approximately 20 years like web2's dominance did, we will look back in the first half of the 2040s at 2020-2023 as the earliest moment when something fundamental began to change.

We will keep the web2 platforms - Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are too powerful and too embedded in our daily lives to melt away. Despite its turbulence, I think Twitter will be fine too. Google was a key part of our daily lives from the early 00s (in other words firmly in the web1 era) and remains dominantly so today, and sometimes technology companies surprise you - Microsoft is arguably the hottest company in tech in 2023 which nobody would've predicted 10 years ago.

It would be foolish for any sports rightsholder to assume those tech giants and their platforms will be null and void just because we’re getting new ones.

Equally, we need to be attuned not just to which platforms are new - but what specifically makes them new, compared to what's gone before.

TikTok came along towards the end of web2 and offered a pointer to something different - it removed the follower/following model as default and replaced it with a spookily sophisticated algorithm that simply showed us what it knew we wanted. In that sense, a streaming platform not a social network. More emphasis on AI doing the heavy lifting; less human curation.

Discord might be less prominent than TikTok but was also a platform that pointed towards something new - in its case, a platform where specific-interest communities would gather, including around blockchain-based technologies like NFTs.

As a point of interest, Seven League's digital trends report for 2019 predicted this return to online communities - and we did so again in our digital trends report for 2023.

AI has been the hot topic of 2023. Whether AI is used as a 'pilot' or guide to the internet (Microsoft's battle with Google for dominance of chat-based AI) or as a new way to create content (generative AI - also predicted in our trends report for 2023) it's clear this is already a fundamental shift in how we use digital products.

Now the attention will return to VR and XR as it did when Zuckerberg first announced his vision for a metaverse, even naming Facebook's parent company Meta.

I think Zuckerberg was always clear in his mind that the metaverse he envisioned was many years from reality, and he wanted to invest in that future to ensure Meta would, this time around, have more control over the hardware (how we access the internet) not just the software (what we do when we get there). He has never (to the best of my knowledge) said it would be an overnight thing, but that hasn't stopped people declaring the metaverse dead.

Not only is it not dead - it has barely begun.

Apple's entry into this market will provide competition which brings innovation. It is a good thing for Meta ultimately, and Zuckerberg would've always known it was coming. I wouldn't rule Bytedance out of this competition either.

It's good for the global sports industry, which must now start to make smart, strategic bets on future audiences - where it will find them and what they will want.

It’s easy to imagine new sports industry content formats for VR/XR - including our matches/games being produced specifically for metaverse broadcast.

In an era of technology, you can't afford to hang around but you also can't afford to waste time and money on false dawns. I say to our clients - you want to be early enough to catch the next Facebook but not so early that you catch the next MySpace.

We are entering the most exciting period in tech for almost 20 years. The VR/XR battle between Apple and Meta, and the AI battle between Microsoft and Google, as well as the continued rise of TikTok, and the growing dominance of streaming platforms, all point to a new era of the internet, and all are good news for the global sports industry.

Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Bytedance, Amazon and others will compete to define web3 and there will be new entrants (collectibles, generative AI), as well as continued success for content giants like Disney, Comcast and Netflix. As well as some overlap between those companies as they all compete with each other, as well as leaning on each other.

In a fertile environment like that, innovation happens. The smartest organisations in sports will already be thinking about their offer in those arenas.

IMG Media has a proven ability to guide sports rightsholders through the tech landscape, since its acquisition of Seven League , which has done this since 2012. The key thing is to look past the short-term hype cycle, and empower sports rightsholders to make smart bets now, that will future-proof them for a new era just emerging.

If your organisation wants any help de-coding this new era of the internet and applying it to your business strategy, we would love to hear from you.