This is part 2 of a 3 part series that I originally posted in 2008. I'm revisiting this series because I feel like I've come a long way since originally drafting these ideas and so has the web 2.0 landscape. I'm using this to reaccess whether my ideas may have been right or wrong and to further refine my hypotheses about this dynamic market. ========
I think I ended cutting the last bit a little short because my brain tends to start running in circles the more I think about something. I'll try to tighten up any loose ends as I continue on to part 2 of this 3 part series.
Social-Media (Web 2.0?)
The first thing that I should say on this topic is that none of what is considered Web 2.0 is really very new. Blogging (writing crap and digitally publishing it) has been around for ages, same with web forums, and a slew of other internet technologies that have been widely accessible and used for nearly a decade. Hell, if we want to step out of the context of the internet, move over youtube, public access tv has been around since at least the 80's. But I'll get into this in more detail in part 3 of this series. Just know that I've considered these concepts as we continue along. Shall we?
There are two main points I want to address (not that I won't tangent off into more, but these are the main 2). First, and in my opinion, anyone who takes the time to create a blog should, at the bear minimum, put some thought into their role as a content creator on the internets, if not speak directly to it on their blog. There's a lot of clutter on the internet and people should put a little consideration as to whether or not their contributions add more clutter, or actually add useful information (a point I really want to drive home, another time). Otherwise one can get stuck at point 2 of the "blog life cycle," where you end up just regurgitating tired revelations over and over again.
Second, as an early "millennial," I grew up with an Apple IIe in my classroom in elementary school (number crunchers and oregon trail FTW), remember getting our first PC at home which was a big deal, remember getting our first CD-ROM drive and installing it ourselves (again, this was a big deal in the early 90's), and I remember using BBS's before the internet. Long story short, I've spent most of my life around computers and depending on them, but I also remember a time when I didn't have that sort of relationship... a simpler time, if you will.
I'm by no means an early adopter (this blog is proof of that), but I tend to stay ahead of trends and I think I have an eye for visionary ideas when I see them. But I remember reluctantly signing up for hot-or-not when my friend hassled me until I did, I always hated that site and its entire concept but it was a primer for sites like friendster which I also reluctantly signed up for back in 2003 when that same friend kept on pestering me to sign up. That was back when I was in L.A. for an internship and didn't really know that many people, that was also when I saw the value in social-media for the first time. If you've ever lived in a city like L.A., you know that you meet people left and right like crazy because everyone is so friendly (or fake for those that don't like L.A., I don't believe it though) and because everyone is so social (ie parties, a lot). You would meet all these people at a party for a fleeting moment and then you'd log into friendster (and later myspace when friendsters servers couldn't take the traffic and all around sucked at that time) find those people through your one or two friends who introduced you and bam! - you had this huge network of people who you found a real connection with and created real relationships with when, in the past, you would have one evening of drunken fun and never even remember their names ever again. I've still got really good friends that I keep up with to this day through that medium.
Fast forward to 2008 and now we all have a profile on over a dozen websites: friendster, myspace, facebook, delicious, flickr, linkedin, digg, twitter, and on and on and on. Privacy and secrecy is basically a thing of the past, we're all connected, and connected in very intimate ways. But what does this all mean, and what does it/can it do for you? Well, it doesn't mean a whole lot... yet.
The way to make money on the internet is not an exact science today; this is still the wild frontier. But as we become more connected, we're going to see more relevant content on the web. For instance, I've been reading a lot of blogs on alltop (an aggregation of blogs across an array of topics that I came across from reading one of the creator's blogs). I was specifically reading a lot of blogs under the topic of design when I kept on finding a bunch of clothing brands and other nick-knacks that I really liked. I think I ended up spending a couple hundred bucks on stuff that month. The point is that the more you know about your market (segment, niche, etc.), the better you can service that market through your offerings whether product or service. Furthermore, the socially connected web is a lot more informal and personal, so you don't feel like a lemming targeted by corporate America to exploit because the product or service being marketed towards you is something that might be passed on by a friend who thought it would be a good fit for you based on a conversation you were just having vs. the "spray and pray" method of putting a bunch of corny ads all over the place a hoping someone actually buys.
Another trend I've been noticing is that people are beginning to shy away from the mega sites like ebay and taking their business to more community based sites like etsy for buying and selling stuff like trinkets and crafts because they are better served by that medium because they are more closely connected (and because people are sick of getting scammed). I think you're going to continue to see smaller web-based communities pop up to fill the gaps where the original mega sites like ebay and amazon left off, but you're going to see this trend across the board whether you're buying products and services or just looking for relevant information.
But as many of you know, not everyone sees things things this way. Stay tuned for part 3 as I cover the skeptics and their criticisms of this web 2.0 craze.