I dislike industry buzzwords, and how quickly they get usurped by those who don't fully comprehend them. "Web 2.0" is a buzzword that has been being tossed around ever since O'Reilly and MediaLive International coined the term to isolate who survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble and why. Yet most people are still unclear on the concept, at best. "Web 2.0" doesn't refer to a platform, a particular set of tools, a programming interface, or even really a design methodology. It is an emergent effect, flowing naturally from the how the Internet works. It's only coming to light recently because, with the dot-com bust, we've separated the wheat from the chaff. As the speed of networks rise and the price of storage falls, the emergent behaviors are simply more evident than they were a decade ago. Universal Mccann International refers to this emergent trend with a better distinction, "Social Media", and defines it as "Online applications, platforms and media which aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration and the sharing of content." See Universal Mcann International slideshow here.
"Web 2.0" is the concept surrounding what the Internet has always been at its core: cheap, fast and sturdy communication leads to collaboration and connection. This collaboration, in turn, leads to ideological community. These communities band together and produce amazing things, akin to the old-fashioned phenomenon of barn-raising. This process has been a potent force on the Internet since its inception. (One of the first "barns" to be raised on the Internet was the Linux operating system, delveloped through collaboration of various Open Source communities). But it's only now emerging on the World Wide Web. This emergent behavior, identified in general by the terms "Web 2.0" and "Social Media", is simply the World Wide Web catching up to the Internet.
---Web 1.0---
Once upon a time, the World Wide Web was just a particular protocol riding on the Internet. It grew to dominate the Internet, so much so, that today "The Web" and "The Internet" are practically synonomous terms. How did this happen? First, the Web itself was user friendly. You didn't have to participate in it, you could simply consume it. This is the crux of Web 1.0. Participation in the web was largely passive. Its content quickly became "top-down" like traditional media, as the platform it rode on became vastly more accessible to "consumers". (The cost of connecting home PCs to the Internet got cheaper. Service providers like AOL could bring the web to your desktop, and the TCP/IP stack was brought from the college UNIX systems to Windows and MacOS users at home for the first time.) Thus, with the demand for consumption of Web content coupled with the cheap delivery of it into the home, to most users there was no functional difference between "The Web" and "The Internet". The Web was the window (pun intended) through which most people saw everything they knew the Internet to be. But people were largely still consumers of the Web's content, not participants in the Internet.
---Web 2.0---
As the base of web consumers expanded, so did web producers, largely in the form of organizations and corporations that were seeking to further their brand in this new media. However, technology and technique advanced on the web to take advantage of the untapped avenue for two-way communication. The Active Participant, ("Active Participant" is the terminology I prefer, as it embodies the individual that both produces and consumes web content) who started with a simple personal webpage found herself with newer modes of interaction. Blogging sites like LiveJournal started to promote social networking. Facebook and MySpace distilled it down and moved social communication, photo sharing, and music to the center, and pushed blog commentary to the peripheral. Sites like del.icio.us allowed us to bypass the middle-ground entirely and feed internet content to our friends without the need for visiting a middle ground. Speaking of "feeding", RSS feeds allow us to aggregate our content and bypass the form (or branding) of that content, making it ever easier to keep up on the news and commentary we want, be it from the New York Times, or the blog of my old college roommates (who frequently write better than the Times).
"Old Media" provided 4 essential functions:
Some form of centralization to build or aggregate the information
A means to distribute the information (which was neither cheap nor easy)
Authorities to edit the content to give it context
Authorities to inventory and catalogue the content to separate the "noise" from the "signal".
So how do we achieve all of these functions with Social Media?
The production and distribution of content should be pretty self-explanatory, this is what Web 1.0 brought us. Editorial contextualizing is being brought about by the blogosphere, and the choices we make regarding which RSS feeds to subscribe to, who to add to our friends lists on social networking sites, and which blogs we visit regularly. Finally, the inventory and cataloging has been replaced with tagging and searching. Again, thanks to advances in hardware and software, we can search massive amounts of information. This is Google's core competency. But beyond this is that we no longer have to pay people to index, catalogue or identify this content. We're doing it for each other. Next time you have a hard time nailing a subject down with a google search, try del.icio.us. You may be surprised at what millions of the web's Active Participants can do. Here's a wonderful video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University that sums up Social Media quite nicely.
---What does it all mean?---
So what practical effect will this new conceptual framework have on our society? I would argue that it is profound. We're only at the very tip of the iceberg in terms of the changes this will render on our world. I'm not one for hyperbole, but I would argue that the mature Internet (by way of Social Media finally coming into it's own on the Web) rivals the printing press in its revolutionary utility. It will change the way we organize, learn, vote, consume, volunteer, work, play, and act.
It will change how we act as consumers. Web 1.0 allowed us far greater freedom in the goods we could purchase, and the ease with which we could acquire them. It allowed producers of niche goods and services to reach markets big enough to sustain themselves. The best example of this has been used book stores. While Amazon.com has been horrible to brick-and-mortar sellers like Borders and Barnes & Noble (who have had to pepper their stores with coffee shops and sell their customers an "experience"), it has been a tremendous benefit to used book sellers who can connect their inventory with Amazon in real time, allowing internet customers around the world access to their rare out-of-print books that may not have a market locally.
If Web 1.0 changed how we buy, Web 2.0 changes how we decide what to buy. If you tag any website with the label "wishlist", and your friends can see what to buy you for your next birthday (If you care to contribute to my happiness and well-being, you can find mine here ). To see if I really want that next Jim Butcher book, I can check out the reviews on Amazon's page before I buy it, or I can see the reviews in the iRead widget on my Facebook page to see what other readers are saying about it. Moreover, iRead may suggest books I would like by comparing my book-ratings and my library with libraries similar to mine.
Sites like Angie's List can help me find reviews written by other people about their experiences with everything from plumbers to mechanics. And Craig's List may help me determine if I need to buy anything at all, if someone out there is looking to get rid of something I've been needing for only the cost of hauling it away. With all of these choices, combined with the thoughful participation of fellow consumers, businesses will have to learn how to navigate and participate in Social Media. Again, I quote Universal Mcann International's report on Social Media:
Social Media has already changed the way we organize, work, and volunteer. The Open Source Software movement is the earliest and finest example of how many hands make light work, producing stable operating systems and applications for free, simply by having the tools to collaborate easily on such projects, and the desire to volunteer some small amount of time, effort, and brainpower to them. Though the Open Source people are the natural earliest adopters of this methodology, we're starting to see its use in all sorts of community organization, from relief efforts to political campaigns. Speaking of which...
Social Media will also change how we act as citizens. Old Media allowed political campaigns to craft thier brand as well as any corporation. In simpler terms, money on advertising in traditional media outlets could put the proper message forward, polished to a high-sheen, and tailored for consumption by the target demographic. Beyond simple advertising was the implicit trade-in-favor of newsmedia, which due to it's role in editorial control and distribution, would trade a certain level of compliance in order to gain access to candidates.
Social Media is just now starting to short circuit this. The first stirrings were 4 years ago, when Howard Dean managed to raise boatloads of cash on the Web. But boatloads of cash isn't going to drive the campaign of the future, Active Participants will. (See my post, The Campaign of the Future.) Active Participants aren't just going to promote their candidates and platforms blindy, however. Barack Obama found this out the hard way when talking at a San Francisco fundraiser a few weeks ago with his now infamous "Guns And Religion" comment. That fundraiser had no traditional reporters in attendance, and if they were, they surely wouldn't have risked future access to Obama's campaign by offering up the information that Mayhill Fowler did, breaking the story. If you think I'm exagerrating the news media's compliance with campaign wishes, Jay Rosen's article here may change your mind. In it, he sums up what Social Media means to political campaigns quite succinctly:
You say "Citizen Journalist", I say "Active Participant". Regardless, it's the way that campaigns will work in the future, so we better get used to dealing with the foibles and missteps of imperfect candidates, and they had better learn that they no longer have complete control over information. This will be a Democracy practiced in a more perfect form, with transparency on the part of governments and campaigns, and a deeper understanding on the part of the constituency, including tolerance of the ugly bits that we're going to have to recognize and put into context once we are no longer accustomed to having information pre-scrubbed for our palatability.
In the world of Social Media, actions speak louder than words, for both the Consumer and the Citizen. The technology, access, and tools are in place for the general population to create, edit, distribute, and catalogue all media. And in this new world the phrase, "The Truth Will Out" has never held so true. We'll have to be more honest with ourselves and each other, and more nuanced in our understanding of our world. Talking points, soundbites, corporate slogans, and product taglines all become meaningless when the conversation is a two-way street and widespread for the the first time in human history.
"Web 2.0" is the concept surrounding what the Internet has always been at its core: cheap, fast and sturdy communication leads to collaboration and connection. This collaboration, in turn, leads to ideological community. These communities band together and produce amazing things, akin to the old-fashioned phenomenon of barn-raising. This process has been a potent force on the Internet since its inception. (One of the first "barns" to be raised on the Internet was the Linux operating system, delveloped through collaboration of various Open Source communities). But it's only now emerging on the World Wide Web. This emergent behavior, identified in general by the terms "Web 2.0" and "Social Media", is simply the World Wide Web catching up to the Internet.
---Web 1.0---
Once upon a time, the World Wide Web was just a particular protocol riding on the Internet. It grew to dominate the Internet, so much so, that today "The Web" and "The Internet" are practically synonomous terms. How did this happen? First, the Web itself was user friendly. You didn't have to participate in it, you could simply consume it. This is the crux of Web 1.0. Participation in the web was largely passive. Its content quickly became "top-down" like traditional media, as the platform it rode on became vastly more accessible to "consumers". (The cost of connecting home PCs to the Internet got cheaper. Service providers like AOL could bring the web to your desktop, and the TCP/IP stack was brought from the college UNIX systems to Windows and MacOS users at home for the first time.) Thus, with the demand for consumption of Web content coupled with the cheap delivery of it into the home, to most users there was no functional difference between "The Web" and "The Internet". The Web was the window (pun intended) through which most people saw everything they knew the Internet to be. But people were largely still consumers of the Web's content, not participants in the Internet.
---Web 2.0---
As the base of web consumers expanded, so did web producers, largely in the form of organizations and corporations that were seeking to further their brand in this new media. However, technology and technique advanced on the web to take advantage of the untapped avenue for two-way communication. The Active Participant, ("Active Participant" is the terminology I prefer, as it embodies the individual that both produces and consumes web content) who started with a simple personal webpage found herself with newer modes of interaction. Blogging sites like LiveJournal started to promote social networking. Facebook and MySpace distilled it down and moved social communication, photo sharing, and music to the center, and pushed blog commentary to the peripheral. Sites like del.icio.us allowed us to bypass the middle-ground entirely and feed internet content to our friends without the need for visiting a middle ground. Speaking of "feeding", RSS feeds allow us to aggregate our content and bypass the form (or branding) of that content, making it ever easier to keep up on the news and commentary we want, be it from the New York Times, or the blog of my old college roommates (who frequently write better than the Times).
"Old Media" provided 4 essential functions:
So how do we achieve all of these functions with Social Media?
The production and distribution of content should be pretty self-explanatory, this is what Web 1.0 brought us. Editorial contextualizing is being brought about by the blogosphere, and the choices we make regarding which RSS feeds to subscribe to, who to add to our friends lists on social networking sites, and which blogs we visit regularly. Finally, the inventory and cataloging has been replaced with tagging and searching. Again, thanks to advances in hardware and software, we can search massive amounts of information. This is Google's core competency. But beyond this is that we no longer have to pay people to index, catalogue or identify this content. We're doing it for each other. Next time you have a hard time nailing a subject down with a google search, try del.icio.us. You may be surprised at what millions of the web's Active Participants can do. Here's a wonderful video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University that sums up Social Media quite nicely.
---What does it all mean?---
So what practical effect will this new conceptual framework have on our society? I would argue that it is profound. We're only at the very tip of the iceberg in terms of the changes this will render on our world. I'm not one for hyperbole, but I would argue that the mature Internet (by way of Social Media finally coming into it's own on the Web) rivals the printing press in its revolutionary utility. It will change the way we organize, learn, vote, consume, volunteer, work, play, and act.
It will change how we act as consumers. Web 1.0 allowed us far greater freedom in the goods we could purchase, and the ease with which we could acquire them. It allowed producers of niche goods and services to reach markets big enough to sustain themselves. The best example of this has been used book stores. While Amazon.com has been horrible to brick-and-mortar sellers like Borders and Barnes & Noble (who have had to pepper their stores with coffee shops and sell their customers an "experience"), it has been a tremendous benefit to used book sellers who can connect their inventory with Amazon in real time, allowing internet customers around the world access to their rare out-of-print books that may not have a market locally.
If Web 1.0 changed how we buy, Web 2.0 changes how we decide what to buy. If you tag any website with the label "wishlist", and your friends can see what to buy you for your next birthday (If you care to contribute to my happiness and well-being, you can find mine here ). To see if I really want that next Jim Butcher book, I can check out the reviews on Amazon's page before I buy it, or I can see the reviews in the iRead widget on my Facebook page to see what other readers are saying about it. Moreover, iRead may suggest books I would like by comparing my book-ratings and my library with libraries similar to mine.
Sites like Angie's List can help me find reviews written by other people about their experiences with everything from plumbers to mechanics. And Craig's List may help me determine if I need to buy anything at all, if someone out there is looking to get rid of something I've been needing for only the cost of hauling it away. With all of these choices, combined with the thoughful participation of fellow consumers, businesses will have to learn how to navigate and participate in Social Media. Again, I quote Universal Mcann International's report on Social Media:
All companies and brands should consider employing them to create open and honest dialogue. Any blog that spins he truth will be found out. In a world of social media, honesty is the only policy. The future of marketing is about acting how you want to be perceived instead of talking about it.
Social Media has already changed the way we organize, work, and volunteer. The Open Source Software movement is the earliest and finest example of how many hands make light work, producing stable operating systems and applications for free, simply by having the tools to collaborate easily on such projects, and the desire to volunteer some small amount of time, effort, and brainpower to them. Though the Open Source people are the natural earliest adopters of this methodology, we're starting to see its use in all sorts of community organization, from relief efforts to political campaigns. Speaking of which...
Social Media will also change how we act as citizens. Old Media allowed political campaigns to craft thier brand as well as any corporation. In simpler terms, money on advertising in traditional media outlets could put the proper message forward, polished to a high-sheen, and tailored for consumption by the target demographic. Beyond simple advertising was the implicit trade-in-favor of newsmedia, which due to it's role in editorial control and distribution, would trade a certain level of compliance in order to gain access to candidates.
Social Media is just now starting to short circuit this. The first stirrings were 4 years ago, when Howard Dean managed to raise boatloads of cash on the Web. But boatloads of cash isn't going to drive the campaign of the future, Active Participants will. (See my post, The Campaign of the Future.) Active Participants aren't just going to promote their candidates and platforms blindy, however. Barack Obama found this out the hard way when talking at a San Francisco fundraiser a few weeks ago with his now infamous "Guns And Religion" comment. That fundraiser had no traditional reporters in attendance, and if they were, they surely wouldn't have risked future access to Obama's campaign by offering up the information that Mayhill Fowler did, breaking the story. If you think I'm exagerrating the news media's compliance with campaign wishes, Jay Rosen's article here may change your mind. In it, he sums up what Social Media means to political campaigns quite succinctly:
Before she was airbrushed out by Tim Russert and changed into a leaker by Jay-Newton Small, Mayhill Fowler was an Obama supporter who sometimes found it necessary to be a critic of the campaign. She is also a citizen journalist with a platform: OffTheBus, which resides at the Huffington Post. Now if the term "citizen journalist" drives you nuts, or gets you up on your high horse, then call her a writer with a page on the Web that can reach the rest of the news system. The point is Fowler is a particular kind of Obama loyalist, a particular kind of contributor to his campaign. The kind with a notebook, a tape recorder, friends in the campaign, a public platform of decent size, plus the faculty of critical intelligence. The campaign doesn't know what it thinks about such people.
The category into which she fits is not an existing one in journalism, which generally forbids contributions to candidates and open expressions of support. It is not a familiar category among donors, either: Citizen journalist for a pro-am site who may or may not publish something if you invite her?
You say "Citizen Journalist", I say "Active Participant". Regardless, it's the way that campaigns will work in the future, so we better get used to dealing with the foibles and missteps of imperfect candidates, and they had better learn that they no longer have complete control over information. This will be a Democracy practiced in a more perfect form, with transparency on the part of governments and campaigns, and a deeper understanding on the part of the constituency, including tolerance of the ugly bits that we're going to have to recognize and put into context once we are no longer accustomed to having information pre-scrubbed for our palatability.
In the world of Social Media, actions speak louder than words, for both the Consumer and the Citizen. The technology, access, and tools are in place for the general population to create, edit, distribute, and catalogue all media. And in this new world the phrase, "The Truth Will Out" has never held so true. We'll have to be more honest with ourselves and each other, and more nuanced in our understanding of our world. Talking points, soundbites, corporate slogans, and product taglines all become meaningless when the conversation is a two-way street and widespread for the the first time in human history.
And mere hours after I post this, Mark Steyn from the National Review Online about print media...
ReplyDelete"Instead of recognizing the necessity to reinvent their approach online, for the most part they simply transferred their old dullness to the new technology."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDJlYzljMzk5MThiYjIwYjU1MGIzYzQxYzgyMjE4YTQ=