Before a salty lake dries up, it becomes more and more saline (Salty), then it dries up and becomes a Dry Salt Lake Bed. It’s the same way with industries that the Internet is effecting. They get reduced from many players, to a few large players, that start fighting dirty, to then a non-existent or just a non-significant industry.
Some examples of industries that have been effected are the Stockbrokers, travel agents, mail (Post office, although just one, it’s fighting against itself), the encyclopaedia industry, translation, newspapers, and now books. This is just a few, there are a lot more that are not very obvious or are subsections of each of the above that are effected also, let’s take the newspapers:
– Help wanted ads were predominantly the domain of the newspapers, as recent as just 15 years ago. Now, almost no one buys a paper to look for a job.
– The Classified ads is another, When was the last time you looked for computer parts, a guitar, a bicycle, or parts for a bicycle, in a newspaper’s classified section? I can safely say, I haven’t done that for more than 10 years.
– The Car dealership ads. This segment in the newspaper has been hit very hard, not only by the Internet by dealers with their own websites and other sites like CarsDirect.com and cars.com, but the direct mail industry also like the circulars that come directly to your house without any cost to you.
– The stock reports of the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper itself. Who waits for the stock prices on when the Wall Street Journal comes out? We used to use that when I was in High School, to do mock investing and forecasting etc. (Wow, am I that old?)
The thorn on the side of the newspapers has been mainly Craigslist, which almost singlehandedly killed the classified section of the newspapers.