A 5-min Reading to Get 2019 Internet Trends

What are the most impressive changes or happenings over the Internet within recent years until 2019? I just got a few from Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report 2019.

Global Internet Users Growing Slower

• After 2018, global Internet penetration became more than half. Growth slowed down
• However, Asia Pacific still has around half population not available to Internet, mainly in China & India
• The top Internet companies (30) are primarily in US (18/30) such as MS, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and secondarily in China (7/30) such as Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan

E-commerce Growing Solidly, Ad Revenue Growing Slower

• E-commerce kept the growth rate, but Ad is slowing down the growth rate with Google/Facebook as leaders
• Relevance level of Ad became more essential. Smart recommendation will be more needed (Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter)
• Better design & UX play more important roles in acquiring more users, since more people would try new things from family/friends recommendation (Spotify, Zoom, Stitch Fix)

Innovation Remains Robust in Gaining Service Usage

• People engaged more with videos/photos/voices contents (YouTube, Instagram, Podcast, Amazon Echo, Twitter, Google AR, Lens Studio, Canva)
• Wearable, on-demand, local combinations are growing with high rate (Nextdoor, Pinduoduo, Meituan Dianping, Rappi, Tokopedia, Shopee, Reliance Jio)
• Financial, payment services kept growing with high rate (Alipay, Toss, Revolut, Nubank, MercadoLibre, Grab)
• Interactive gaming started to grow rapidly (Fortnite)

Freemium/Premium Model Became New Enablers

• Freemium/Premium started to bring more users on-boarding, usage, sharing, engagement (Game: Runescape, Epic Fortnite, Nexon, HearthStone, Zynga, Rovio; Enterprise Services: G Suite, Zoom, Dropbox, Slack, Wix, SurveyMonkey; Consumer Services: Spotify, Canva, Amazon Prime, Twitch, Chegg, Cash App)
• Main infra improvements that made this model possible: 1. Cloud Deployment (AWS, GCP, Azure); 2. Payment Services (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, WeChat Pay)

Users Brought Data Growth

• Data growth triggered more data collection, analysis, utilization (Capital One, Amazon, Qualtrics, FabFitFun, Salseforce, Adidas, Stripe, Slack, Plaid, Betterment, HelloFresh, Twilio, Shopify, Segment, Meredith, Snowflake, Instacart, Confluent, Accor, Looker, FarFetch, UiPath, Sumitomo Mitsui)

Internet Usage Concern

• Overload (Self-Expression vs Inadequate Sleep)
• Privacy (high but moderating, encrypted msg growing)
• Problematic content / activity (People natively prefer negative news) trend to be less filtered and more amplified (FB, YouTube, Twitter), and bad actors/ unintended misinformation spreaders are more motivated
• Partly-free env was rising, while totally-free or totally-not-free were falling
• Reviews could affect more to a business/product (Airbnb)
• Cyber attacks increased and focused more on data

Internet business helped increasing employment

• More people got a job from on-demand business (DoorDash, Stripe Connect, Square Payments, Checkr, Wonolo, VIPKid, Uber, Etsy)
• More people got a remote-working job (Zapier, Zoom, Slack, Google Sheets, Airtable, Help Scout)

Online Education on Strong & High Growth

• University courses/programs moved to online (Coursera, 2U)
• Online work/school/interest education grew rapidly (Udemy, Lambda School, Chegg, Quizlet, Remind, VIPKid, Byju's, YouTube, Grow With Google)
• Most profitable areas are business, tech, data science, etc

Immigration - USA

• More high valued tach companies are founded by foreign, non-US born immigrants
• Medicare & medicaid lead the spending growth of US expense. Entitlements cost occupy more share over the past 30 years

Healthcare (USA) With Growing Digital Impact

• Healthcare is moving offline to online (Electronic Health Records, Health Networks, On-demand Urgent Care, Telehealth / Telemedicine, Prescription Delivery, Professional Community, Health Insurance, Health Incentive Tools)
• More healthcare data are collected (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Facebook, IBM)
• Healthcare innovations are happening (Apple hardware, Google AI, MS AI, PillPack)

China Internet - Large Number of Innovative Products & Impressive Businesses

• Short-form videos led the mobile user & usage increasing trend (Douyin, Kuaishou, Haokan)
• Gamification of payment, e-commerce, retail, education services as China's innovation (WeChat Mini-Programs: Tiao yi tiao, Uniqlo, Pinduoduo, Tongcheng-Elong, WeSing, QA Code, Xiaoniangao; Alipay Ant Forest, Pinduoduo Group Social Shopping, Belle, TopSports, TAL (XRS) Online, Coding Cat, Cartoon & Students PK)
• WeChat drove the evolution from chat to Mini-Programs, facilitating e-commerce, payments & CRM, which followed by the global rollouts (Kakao, Line, Instagram / What's App, Yonghui Superstores)
• Meituan engaged the transformation from group social shopping to super apps powering the local services
• Alipay started as payment service but then grew as a super app with many Mini-Programs & financial services, which was imitated by other companies oversea (Grab, Rappi, Uber)
• The combination of live-streaming and e-commerce improved the transparency, interactivity & influencer engagement (Taobao Live, Kuaishou, Mogu)
• Various grocery stores went online as well (Freshippo (Hema), 7 Fresh, Miss Fresh, Dingdong Maicai, Pupu Shengxian, Xingsheng Youxuan, Songshu Pinpin, Dailuobo, Meituan, Ele.me, Taoxianda, JD Daojia)
• Alibaba "New Retail" moved offline retails to online (Sun Art, Suning JV, Intime, Easy Home, Eleme & Koubei, Tmall Store, Ling Shou Tong)
• Education also spreaded from offline to online (TAL: Xueersi Online, Xueersi Shuangshi; Zuoyebang, VIPKid, Hetao Coding, Coding Cat)
• WeChat Pay / Alipay also digitizing the government services to pay for utility bill, social security application, traffic violation, hospital appointment, etc. (YueShengShi)

If you went back to some of the moments in your memory recently, one or a few of those trends above should have been happening around you. While with these small notes, they could give you a clue of what else more people out there are undergoing.