You wanted to contribute content, tell corporations what you wanted, express yourself, and connect and share with your friends and others. You helped propel this frenzy of making the Internet the platform. Yet, at the Web 2.0 conference in 2008, they forgot about you.
I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco all week and I was surprised to see that none of the sessions over the 4 days had a user's perspective. For Example - they had a panel of "community managers" sharing how they built successful communities, but no one from the community to share why they choose to become part of a community and what they expect from the community. They had people talk about different ways to monetize - through widgets, apps, and advertising.
But no one was asking the users what they think of the Ads taking real estate on their page, or about all the silly apps being built for social networking sites. Maybe "none" is an overstatement. Two sessions stood out. O'Reilly in his keynote talked about using the Internet as a platform to make BIG changes, like making our governments more transparent to the people. Jonah Piretti, in his breakout session - the best one I attended - talked about there is no formula in making something viral.
People (not particular persons) decide what interests them and what they want to forward and people are unpredictable. The success of viral events can be analyzed but not repeated. Of course, his presentation was engaging b'coz he himself was very funny and had very funny anecdotes to share. Google him and you will find some of his stories.
Posts
1 comment:
Maybe we have all the internet 2.0 stuff we need. At some point we got the basic internet 1.0 apps - companies had web sites, you could buy stuf at some like Amazon and we had email and electronic trading and banking.
Now between facebook and a forum for every topic (which is really just a graphic version of something we've had since before the internet even existed, the BBS) and a few other key Web2.0 apps like picassa, flicr and you tube perhaps we've exhausted what this concept has to offer.
I never did have that much interest in telling corporations what I think. If they do something horrible I suppose I might write the CEO a letter, but failing that, no.
Perhaps I'm not the right demographic for web 2.0. I notice I have 30 friends on my facebook, by daughter has 300.
Anyway, I'm interested in thinking and talking about this stuff.
Post a Comment