Text is finite; video is infinite.

Emerging internet infrastructure is shaping up to look a lot like traditional high-traffic networks (rail, auto, air, water, etc.). Increasingly, it connects large centers of content aggregation with high-volume information "retailers". The trend is driven by availability of digital video:

(NYT 3/1/10). Arbor’s Internet Observatory Report concluded that today the majority of Internet traffic by volume flows directly between large content providers like Google and consumer networks like Comcast. ...“Out of the 40,000 routed end sites in the Internet, 30 large companies — ‘hyper giants’ like Limelight, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and YouTube — now generate and consume a disproportionate 30 percent of all Internet traffic."

The company[Cisco] estimates that video will account for 90 percent of all Internet traffic by 2013.

Furthermore, the next generation wireless networks are built with video streaming as a primary user scenario:

Verizon Wireless has been testing its forthcoming 4G LTE network in both Boston and Seattle since August, 2009. Successful data calls involved streaming video, file uploads and downloads, and Web browsing, as well as calls with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to enable voice transmissions over the LTE network.

The next series of biztech battles are going to be about video formats, content recommendation systems (e.g. iTunes vs Netflix vs Facebook, etc.), and processing power/efficiency of mobile devices.

tags: payload, distribution, system, evolution, information, google, apple, , infrastructure, innovation