Kids hold key to internet's next `big thing'

Mike Mather | 17th May 2006

Want to know what the next big internet trend is going to be? Just check out what your kids are doing on it right now.

That's what Sam Morgan says - and he should know.

Mr Morgan founded the hugely successful New Zealand auction website Trade Me, which he sold in March for $700 million.

Greater use of the internet as a means of interpersonal communication would be the next "big thing", he said.

"A good tip is to see how people younger than you are using the web and learn from them. You can see it in your own household, where young people are becoming more skilled in the ways of the internet than their parents.

"Just look at mobile phones. Just 10 years ago people still associated them with yuppies, now kids in preschool have got them."

Mr Morgan was in Rotorua yesterday speaking at a Real Estate Institute of New Zealand conference.

Rapidly changing internet technology and the way people make use of it was a major theme in his keynote speech.

Many people were using the internet to chat online and using social networks to make contact with like-minded people - a trend Mr Morgan predicted would increase markedly in coming years.

"As the net speeds up, we will be seeing a lot more things like voice-over technology coming through," he said.

"Over time the internet will more and more become part of the background of your everyday lives. It may soon be just as easy to make a phone call or watch a television show over the internet, as it is by today's conventional methods."

Mr Morgan built Trade Me in 1999 when he was 23 on a borrowed laptop over a rainy weekend.

Since he sold his company, everyday life had changed little for him, he said.

"I'm getting a bit more attention from the media than I had previously. In a city like Wellington, people are pretty relaxed about the whole thing and don't really hassle me [about it] ... I still walk to work every day."