As a business partner or client of Best4u Media, you are probably familiar with Qind, the Content Management System we developed in-house. It enables you to manage your site yourself in a relatively simple way. When the editors of 2morrow asked me to share my vision on the future of Content Management, I was immediately enthusiastic. However, it turned out to be more difficult than expected to put a clear story on paper without resorting to writing a complete book. After all, quite a lot has changed in the past 20 years. A colleague also recently said to me: “the internet is what happens when everyone is too busy making plans for the next five years.” To be able to say something about the future, perhaps we should first look at the past.
Web1.0
When the internet was first used on a large scale for commercial activities in the 90s, it was primarily focused on one-way communication. It was mainly used to digitally post a business card or brochure. You could find and read a lot of information there, but there was no interaction between the visitor and the website. Maintaining websites was a task reserved only for real 'nerds'.
Web2.0
With the emergence of Web 2.0 at the beginning of the new century, people meant that “interaction” was emerging on the web. People could leave comments, and the site owner no longer had to be the only one determining what appeared on their site. The web was now a place to actively participate in. You could expand your network of friends with Facebook or Hyves, share movies with the rest of the world via YouTube, or contribute to an encyclopedia on Wikipedia. Maintaining websites became a piece of cake with the advent of CMSs.
Nu
In terms of developments, we are actually now approaching the end of Web 2.0. A logical next step is for the internet to become more mature and intelligent. Imagine you have an old classmate who has moved to another country and you want to visit him there to have a drink together. If you have access to the intelligent web, your computer will search for a cafe itself that
A good rating near your classmate's house checks your and your friend's calendars to see which day works best, and sees if this matches the opening hours. Next, it also figures out the best way to get there for you and whether there might be any delays due to traffic. We call this the semantic web or Web 3.0. Google is already very far along with this thanks to all the data they have collected over the past few years. In one way or another, therefore, we will also have to make it clearer with our “content” what it is. Additionally, visitors increasingly expect information tailored to them. The web will therefore also have to become increasingly personal.
What will this mean for CMS?
Integration, Integration, Integration. We believe that the CMS will increasingly become the “headquarters” of your business information. You have a chunk of “content” consisting of text, images, or video. From here, you determine what should happen with this info. Will you share it on the company website, publish it on Twitter or Facebook, display it on a tablet app, send it to a specific customer group, or publish it on your own intranet? Additionally, there will be a layer that ensures content is personalized based on the visitor profile and that the language is appropriate. The CMS is no longer primarily a place to maintain your website, but rather a place where you determine where you publish information, how you display it, and when it is released. It is also a place where information comes together, where you can view visitor statistics across all platforms, and launch new campaigns. One thing is certain, however: the internet is becoming increasingly smarter and larger and will play an even bigger role than it already does.