I’ve been doing lots of pondering on the nature of websites in 2011 and what they might look like in 2015 (I don’t think the web will be dominated by Facebook / Google+ etc in 2015 or 2020). My school is undergoing conversations now about our site and how we can move towards the idea of “Hub Not Broadcaster” design.

Obviously, websites are only going to continue to find more and more of their traffic base coming from mobile and tablet devices compared to traditional browsers on traditional computing machines like laptops or desktops.

What this means for marketers, site designers and anyone thinking about this evolution is that our notions of “above the fold” or “headers” will undergo extreme unction and change very rapidly very soon as more people become accustomed to services like Flipboard or the new Google Currents.

I just set up a Google Current for our school and was amazed at how quick and simple the process of creating a hub has become. As this technology continues to proliferate, expect to see an explosion of flipboard-looking designs compared to traditional blog or website designs that start at the top and move vertical down based on long scrolling.

With the notion of gesture based navigation already becoming mainstream very quickly with new Mac laptops as well as iPads, iPhones and Android devices, it’s not a hard stretch to think of the website of the near future being very horizontal in orientation and navigated by a series of swipes instead of mouse rolls or scrolls.

Welcome to the future and make sure your marketing messages and content are gesture and aggregation friendly.