The web is dead? Not yet.

Wired’s cover story this month, “The Web is Dead,” features the following chart showing the portion of internet traffic in different uses:

[Image available at wired.com]

Over the past few years, peer-to-peer services and video have gobbled up an increasing share of traffic, while he “traditional” web — you know, surfing from site to site, reading your favorite blog about economics, finance, and life, etc. — has been declining.

Chris Anderson cites this as evidence of the pending death of the web. To which there is only one thing to say: wait a minute buster. Just because the web’s share of total bits and bytes is falling doesn’t mean it’s dying. Maybe it’s just that the other services are growing more rapidly.

One of the benefits of being off the grid for a week-plus is that other commentators have already had the same thought and have tracked down the relevant data. Kudos to Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing for charting the data in absolute terms. Rather than dying, the web is still growing like fresh bacteria in a petri dish:

[Image available at boingboing.net]

Add/view comments on this post.

------------------------------

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.