Web 2.0

Web 2.0 bubble is cultural, not financial

06/08/2007 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages but not had the time. It’s a bit of an essay but I’m pleased I’ve got it off my chest. I’ve even added sub-headings to encourage you to read it!

In the beginning was the web

There’s a web 2.0 bubble being talked about by quite a few people at the moment – hell, it was even being discussed by delegates at Loic Le Meur’s Le Web 3 last December while the speakers onstage were discussing how to monetize social media.

One thing has struck me by the discussions I’ve heard or read about the looming burst – they are all framed by people’s experiences in and around the first dot.com boom in the late 1990s.

But isn’t web 2.0 different? Are not all the great tools and products we using in 2007 founded on a set of different principles?

The shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

Whereas the web 1.0 boom was based on the financial development of the web; web 2.0 is about the communities that are adapting their behaviour, beliefs and cultural values to the web and the powers it offered in the late 1990s. Only thing is, these powers weren’t recognised, tapped into or released back then.

In fact you can go even further and argue that it took the first dot.com bust to unleash the social, cultural and value-based changes that have come to represent web 2.0.

But don’t take my word for it. In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman, points out that one of the biggest drivers for bringing geographical, social and political barriers crashing down has been the huge proliferation of broadband which enabled the mass uptake of the high-speed internet.

How did this rapid proliferation take place? Because when the first dot.com boom bust the cost of fibre-optic cables hit rock bottom meaning enterprising firms could snap up miles of the stuff for no money at all.

Five years later broadband is (relatively) dirt cheap and giving everybody access to a new world of collaboration, knowledge sharing and almost limitless information.

From market-value to shared-values

The point I’m trying to make is that the first bust was financial because the main driver for the boom was financial.

With Web 2.0 the over-riding driver of growth is social or cultural. People use Facebook or write a blog not because it earns them cold, hard cash, but because it enriches their life.

Look at what made YouTube worth $1.65bn to Google. Was it the amazing proprietary software YouTube offered? No. It was the latent value held within the site’s engaged, active and networked community.

If you’re still not convinced let me assure you most of the great ways to monetize social media being talked about at Le Web 3 were based on the Web 1.0 holy trinity of advertising; sponsorship or registration-based services. There is no undiscovered way to get financial leverage from social media. The financial clout comes in the form of the networked society itself but current economic and business models are not in any position to benefit as they don’t understand the shift from traditional markets to a networked economy.

Web 2.0 has allowed us to tap the potential of Web 1.0

In all of this what becomes clear – for me, at least – is that the Web 1.0 dot.com boom and bust allowed the internet as a networked infrastructure to flourish and spread.

Web 2.0 has allowed people – and future generations in particular – to adopt and adapt to new ways of communicating and behaving.

Tony Perkins puts it nicer than me in an FT article, Bubble 2.0, when he says:

“The great achievement of the Web 2,0 era, which is coming to an end, is that we learnt some of the distinguishing values of the internet.”

The article then points out: ‘By stimulating the sharing of content and social networking … Web 2.0 companies have been the first to tap into the internet’s true potential to connect people.’

This for me is where we come to with a Web 2.0 boom. People have been adopting and adapting to the web’s “true potential” and this potential is fundamentally based on empowering people socially and culturally.

If mass markets cannot currently sustain the economic growth of Web 2.0 companies then some will fall by the way-side. But instead of a heap of disgruntled share-holders or burnt VCs, we will have a whole generation of digital natives familiar with the social and economic concepts of the ‘gift economy’ and social production. They will possess the cultural knowledge of what it is like to live in a networked world.

This is a hugely positive and exciting event. It will also be a challenge to organisations, businesses and governments. These institutions will need to adopt and adapt in order to survive this cultural collapse.

Technorati tags: Web 2.0; bubble; social+production; future; dot+com+boom; gift+economy; networked+economy

How to use Facebook to build a politically engaged and active network

05/09/2007 by simoncollister 1 Comment

We are all pretty familiar with using social netwokring sites like Facebook and MySpace to connect with people we know and others we didn’t but are glad we did.

Some brands have even worked out some really good ways to use social networks to drive traffic and increase sales.

But beyond gaining someone’s attention and hoping they’ll visit your site or store and make a purchase, how can social sites really add value to a brand or cause?

Well, firstly social networks are great as aggregators gathering people and supporters to shared issues. As a result online networks are being used to a major extent in the political world.

Out of the three main contenders for the Labour deputy-leadership, all three candidates have Facebook groups. All good, but beyond notching up who has more Facebook supporters what additional value does this bring to their individual cause?

Well, I came across a really interesting but highly siginificant Facebook group last night which I think offers a great demonstration of how to really engage and derive long-term benefit from networks – both off and online.

Admittedly, the group – Young Britons’ Foundation – has the ring of something dreamt up by Sir Oswald Mosley might have come up with, but it states it aims as:

“to help to train the next generation of candidates, for all levels of public office, as well as those interested in working in the media and public life generally. We want to ensure firstly that there will be a next generation of conservatives, and secondly that they are equipped with the skills and the knowledge to be able to articulate a centre-right alternative.”

This to me seems a great idea for both building and using a network – both off and online.

It goes beyond simply gathering useful contacts and instead looks to build a potential network which can be called on to help achieve mutual goals. In return members can access support and asistance from the group’s co-ordinators.

While essentially there is nothing new in terms of what the group aims to achieve, but credit is due in that it is leveragin maximum benefit to a new medium. Furthermore, it is leveraging maximum benefit according to a set of new and different values.

Some may argue it all sounds a bit sinister, but by using an online network the organisation as a whole should end up becoming more transparent. I can see a similar group working just as well for prospective MPs and this is exactly the sort of thing political parties should be investing time and money in to engage with a disaffected, young electorate.

Technorati tags: Facebook; social_networks; social+networking; Young+Briton+Foundation; politics

Andrew Keen, Digg and Radio 4’s BH: a round-up of last week on and off the web

05/07/2007 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

I’ve been meaning to post about a number of events that unfolded last week but am only now getting round to it.

First up was the Observer’s story last Sunday (29 April 2007) about Andrew Keen, the British guy living in Silicon Valley who has published a book about how the internet – and more specifically what some pople refer to as Web 2.0 – is:

“destroying culture, ruining livelihoods and threatening to make consumers of new media regress into ‘digital narcissism’.”

Keen’s argument is proponded in his new book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy and basically runs that in the future, culture will be reduced to either UGC from self-obsessed wannabes or corporate advertising masquerading as UGC.

This story got on my nerves as it’s the kind of prediction that traditional media outlets love – “ooh, a bit of internet-bashing” but more importantly it doesn’t take a deeper look at the evidence showing us how the web is really developing.

Look at the evidence. The Observer writes about Keen’s “dystopian vision”:

“As the internet grows, so do reports of faked identities and stalking on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, deliberately misleading entries on Wikipedia, virtual vandalism in online world Second Life and accusations that YouTube is a forum for either copyright infringement or mind-numbing videos of skateboarding cats.”

What this actually proves is that the internet is becoming socially and culturally more embedded in real life. Fake id, stalking, lying, vandalism and skateboarding cats have been around for as long as mankind – although maybe not skateboarding cats.

Then there’s Keen’s assertion that:

“At the current rate … by 2010 there will be more than 500 million blogs, ‘so dizzyingly infinite that they’ve undermined our sense of what is true and what is false, what is real and what is imaginary’.”

This pretty much overlooks Heather Green from Businessweek‘s discovery that blog growth is slowing and crystalizing around a core of established blogs. So a future where we can’t tell real from imaginary looks unlikely.

Keen is also worried that new media is threatening to make us regress to digital narcissism. So it’ a good job he’s here to prevent it happening by… er… becoming a cause-celebre that promotes his new book through not one, but three blogs [hat-tip Fiona Blamey].

Then on Tuesday came the Digg Revolution. I won’t add to the reams already written about this except to say that it marks a significant demonstration of the power online communities have acquired. I can only think of one other example like this – albeit with much less significance. But as the wisdom or otherwise of the crowd grows I would advise organisations to start considering how their operations could be affected. As Antony Mayfield eloquently puts it:

“You can’t keep secrets in open networks. Adjust your business and marketing models early to avoid disappointment, please.”

Happily the week ended with a piece about the Andrew Keen story on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme. Although a lot of the sensationalist rot was repeated in the programme, Leeds University’s Professor of Political Communication, Stephen Coleman, came to the rescue with a reasoned and thankfully rational argument for the continued development of society and cultrue through the internet.

The even better news is that the package can be heard again using the BBC’s ‘Listen again’ feature.

The real reason I’ve put these events into a post is that I am convinced they all add up to something greater. I haven’t worked it out yet but hopefully will get a second to think about it all further and come up with a more original post this week. Hopefully…

Technorati tags: Observer; Andrew+Keen; Digg; wisdom+of+the+crowd; BBC; Radio+4; Broadcasting+House