I see a lot of big names in the web business saying the future of the web is, "Content."  There has been a popular conversation about Lorem Ipsum Killing Web Design. These two thoughts are connected in that they all say, "Content is King." That the purpose of the web is to support the content and the web will grow and grow with new types of content. The whole web will be a big, huge content fest! I think they're valid observations, but I disagree completely.

Yes, for a website to have real purpose, it needs great content. For it to thrive and be successful, it needs great content. But that's old news. The web is about elasticity. People are consuming our content streams at an alarming rate, and on an alarming number of devices and browsers. The future of the web is about Experience. To make a point, you might publish a great article on your website, and then use Ping.fm to automatically tweet it and update all your favorite networks. Now, people are experiencing your article, but not necessarily the full piece you have on your blog. They're seeing the 140 character update, first. Throw into the mix an email newsletter, accompanying video clips, user comments and other interaction and your article is a whole lot more than just an article!

Think of how people now react to live events and natural disasters. If there's a tornado in Chicago, updates will come pouring in well before the local news outlet has a live reporter on the scene or the newspaper runs an article. Text messages update Twitter, Facebook, and any number of other social networking websites. Flickr streams get picked up and added to by friends, and aggregated to other sites and devices. Yea, all those tweets and photos are "content,"  but they're all connected into a much larger experience.

Would you call an online store a collection of products? Online shopping is more than just products! Users can find and save products to customized wish lists and share them with others. They can create reviews and comment on products, build communities around them. The online shopping experience is not just plucking an object off a shelf.

Back in the days of Web 1.0, the internet was a huge collection of web pages. Now, user interaction and experience is the driving force. A site like Twitter launches with NO CONTENT! The users generate everything. The founders created a great framework to allow people to use Twitter in amazing, unique and unforseen ways. Today, Experience is King.

And that's why Lorem Ipsum is saving your web designs. Definitely, plan a content strategy and know the direction you're going to take your site. But feel free to plug in dummy content afterward! After all, your site is about the whole experience, not just the content. You can't possibly forsee all the new content, users and new features that may pop up, so Lorem Ipsum allows you to look past the content you have now, and envision the experience you're creating. Your website will hopefully be growing as you add to it in the future, and your design should be fluid and flexible enough to be able to handle it. If your web site isn't designed to handle the future, it will lay dormant and unused.