Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:

Five Things The Internet Is Killing
1. The Music Industry
- I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year.  That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!

2. The Movie Industry
- see above.  It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer. 

3. Real Estate Agents
- I keep hearing these commercials that slam "do it yourself" real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you.  Frankly, they reek of desperation.  Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet - many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications.  Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property - the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?

4. Traditional Software
- increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins.  MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.

5. Newspapers
- I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do - are usually from memory.  Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!)  Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely.  Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?)  The New York Times gets it right - all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.

Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing
Books
- outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else.  To paraphrase Twain, "the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated."  I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books.  Really?  Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet.  I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship.  When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre.  Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship.  I think that's what will happen with "real" books and e-books.  E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books. 

(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)

[2008-08-11 - Edit: here's another list on the topic from Cracked that counts phone books, MP3 players, DVD's, magazines, catalogues and newspapers, hard copies of video games, and cash.  I'd also add "Post Office" to the list of things you'd think the Internet is killing but isn't.]