As a former technology reporter and columnist for such publications as the Washington Business Journal, the Ecommerce Times and the Raging Bull, I have witnessed firsthand the birth and growth of the worldwide information database and marketplace we call the Internet.

As a writer, site owner and entrepreneur I have watched the Internet grow from its infancy of free information and wonderment into its current adolescence of being a wild, ever-changing, unreliable and often unethical platform where billions of products and services are sold to consumers, who much always watch their backs -- and entrepreneurs whose financial fortunes are sometimes destroyed by falling out of favor with the latest search-engine algorithms and/or becoming victims of blatant copyright infringement.

This special report explores the uncertain marketing future of the Internet as we know it today and how other more stable and organic platforms are already replacing it in some fast-growing marketing niches.