Archive for the 'Web 2.0' category

The Anti-Social Social Network

Apr 05 2007 Published by under Craziness, Society, Technology, The Internet, Web 2.0

Just yesterday I launched a new Facebook Group called The Anti-Social Social Network to celebrate the irony of the fact that most of the people I know who work in Social Networking tend to view themselves as fairly anti-social.

Then today, I saw this article about a flash mob storming a train station in London. It made me conclude that flash mobs are really an expression of the same concept. You can’t get more of an anti-social social network than 4,000 people showing up for the same event, at the same time, only to dance to their own personal iPod soundtrack in what appears to be complete silence to everyone around them.

Unfortunately, AntiSocialNetworking.com is taken. Otherwise I would build it out as the most anti-social web 2.0 site I could possibly create.

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Why Are You Time’s Person Of The Year?

Dec 18 2006 Published by under Society, Technology, The Internet, Web 2.0

Katie and I were trading e-mail about the Time magazine Person of the Year and I thought I’d share the general discussion just to throw it out there. Katie wondered if Time magazine was taking the easy way out by declaring “you” the Person of the Year. Sure, the capabilities for collaboration online are great, but does it rise to the Man of the Year?

My reply, in essence, challenges the first assertion in the article – that the “Great Man” theory of humanity took a beating this year. Despite all the hype around YouTube, MySpace, and web 2.0, I don’t buy that the fundamental balance between fame and obscurity was altered in the slightest.

If you look at the big moments online – Macaca, Conrad Burns, Michael Richards’ meltdown, etc. They have one thing in common – they are all stories about ‘great’ men. Now I use great not in the context that they actually are, but to suggest that in our celeb obsessed world, they would probably fit into Thomas Carlyle’s definition.

Other than the guy running the camera in the Allen video, does anyone actually know the name of the people that captured these events? Of all the bands pimping themselves on MySpace, how many have actually entered pop culture relevance because of it? The Wikipedia page for MySpace lists two – Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen. The former had never even heard of MySpace before discovering a fan had created a site and the latter points out that she had a contract before ever establishing a presence online.

What about normal people getting hundreds of thousands of friends and becoming celebrities? Well, most are either models, actors, porn stars, or bands. The few who have escaped obscurity and landed any kind of mainstream publicity are far between and generally relegated to c-list exposure like Playboy spreads (Can you say Darva Conger?) and appearances on daytime talk shows.

So MySpace hasn’t really ‘made’ anyone. With the exception of fat kids who want to be Darth Maul, or fat kids singing/dancing to obscure Romanian pop songs (neither of which, it is worth noting, originated on YouTube), most of the few examples of video that have become famous involve people who were already major or minor celebrities.

So clearly there is some other indicator that these sites are changing the world, right? Well, no. Not yet.

Does that mean all the hype over online collaboration is empty hype? I don’t think so. I am a firm believer that the Internet empowers people. in campaigns, I have seen the possibilities for allowing people to work – either independently or with others, and achieve some amazing things. We may yet come to a day when the power of the Internet is realized, but I do not, at all, believe a 24/7 version of America’s Funniest Home Videos, or a virtual American Idol for garage bands, amateur directors, porn stars, and wannabe actors is changing the world.

These sites, in the short term, may add a few more marginal celebs to the balance sheet, but they will not fundamentally change the nature of our fame obsessed society. They will be, in the annals of history, the Internet equivalent of the pet rock.

So, in answer to Katie’s question, yes. I believe Time magazine took the easy way out.

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Web 2.0 and Control

Oct 20 2006 Published by under Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Technology, The Internet, Web 2.0

At the end of yesterday’s post, I noted that today I’d tackle control issues and their impact on Politics and Web 2.0. The control issues demonstrated by politicians have always been kind of a pet peeve of mine. I’ve taken some heat for pointing out the ridiculous lengths some Republicans go to in order to keep a firm grip on their message.

This isn’t really about that, though. It’s more about control as expressed through the mitigation of risk, more than through message discipline. You could argue the two are closely entwined, but I really think there is a distinction and I’d like to draw it. I’d also like to explore a tendency I see in culture that is really disturbing to me.

I’m a big fan of Greg’s Previews on Yahoo Movies. I liked it better when it was UpcomingMovies.com, but Yahoo! hasn’t damaged it too badly. I’m not, however, a big fan of a tendency I see in Hollywood, and in politics.

I read recently that Kristin Cavallari will be starring in a remake of Revenge of the Nerds. that news really made we want to gag. Every time I read movie news, it seems like some studio has decided to remake either a classic movie (generally ones that aren’t that old), or has adapted a classic 70s or 80s TV show for the big screen (Dukes of Hazzard, CHiPs, Miami Vice).

I’ve railed on this blog before about the fact that Hollywood seems to be completely and totally devoid of new ideas. But I really don’t think that’s it. Movies like Stranger than Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Napoleon Dynamite and others have convinced me that we do not have a dearth of creativity. We have, I believe a dearth of bravery and an abundance of fear.

In Hollywood, fear of failure leads to studios making horrible remakes of old TV shows. They try to tap into our sense of nostalgia in an effort to draw an audience, and instead end up creating films that nobody wants to see. I would be interested to see a study (and perhaps I’ll do one in a few weeks when Mrs. Quip is traveling), that examines the percentage drop in revenue for films as a corollary of the number of remakes in a given year.

Similarly, in politics, we continue to rehash all the same tried and true charges of liberalism, tax-and-spend, extremist, etc. In advertising, we recreate the exact same spots over and over – the grainy photo of your opponent, the newspaper headlines, the flashing lights of a police car in the background of a crime spot. It’s all the same, but since the images don’t change, the only way to make the charges stick is to exaggerate – more and more – the actual charge. The reason we think we’re drifting down a spiral of ever more negative ads isn’t because the ads get worse. They stay exactly the same. It’s because the script gets worse.

Is the audience for movies shrinking because the interest in movies is shrinking? Or is the interest in movies shrinking because the quality of the movies is in steady decline?

Do you need to make political charges ever-more sensational because people are ignoring politics and we must break through? Or are people ignoring politics because the process of breaking through is ever more repellent?

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Web 2.0 and Political Movements

Oct 19 2006 Published by under Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Society, Technology, The Internet, Web 2.0

Continuing yesterday’s thoughts on web 2.0, Anne and I exchanged some traffic on that post and this article from the Washington Examiner last week.

They got me wondering whether the online ‚Äúconservative elite‚Äù was aware of what the left had in mind and, if so, whether they were concerned. During the past few years, I have had the opportunity to ask this of Internet specialists working on the Bush-Cheney campaign, top officials in the Republican National Committee, communications specialists at the White House and dozens of top conservative bloggers…

When I suggested that ceding control of the major “nodes” in the online world to the left was a huge mistake, they were dismissive. It became clear they could not imagine one day finding themselves boxed out of what is fast becoming the biggest force in electoral politics.

First, I’m not sure who he was talking to, but it wasn’t me. Having been the eCampaign Director for both BC04 and the RNC, I’d think he would have picked up the phone, but alas, he didn’t. It’s probably better for his story that he didn’t, because I would have been tempted to point out how dumb his premise really is.

Nobody gets boxed out of web 2.0. That’s sort of the whole point. But let’s look at this through three factors – the movement, the medium, and the message.

Movements have nothing to do with the medium. You can argue that the whole lefty “people powered politics” is a function of the Internet, but it’s a fallacious argument. The same passion, ideology and motivation existed before the Internet. The reason the GOP turned to radio in 1994 is the same reason Democrats turned to the Internet after 2000 – it is the most interactive form of communication available and it is a media popular with the youth.

What does youth matter? I’ll explain, but let’s hit the interaction angle first.

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Web 2.0 and Ownership

Oct 18 2006 Published by under Miscellany, Technology, The Internet, Web 2.0

My dear friend Anne sent me a note today asking my opinion of web 2.0. My brief reply was simply, “defined as?” For a lot of people, that’s pretty much the problem. I considered sharing some thoughts on the epic lack of clarity that is web 2.0, but I figured I would pick an accepted definition (consulting none other than the Internet’s gold standard – Wikipedia) and put together some thoughts instead.

I think I’m going to end up doing this in several parts because my effort to wrap my brain around it led me in too many different directions. I’ll start with some of the issues created with intellectual property.

Assuming we want to look at this through the framework of the “principles” cited in the Wikipedia article, they would include:

* the Web as a platform
* data as the driving force
* network effects created by an architecture of participation
* innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of “open source” development)
* lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
* the end of the software adoption cycle (“the perpetual beta”)
* software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.

I’ll try to keep this out of the technology weeds, so if you’re more interested in the intellectual property aspects, keep reading. I’m going to, by hopefully a few degrees, draw some conclusions about 2.0 based on the application of such technologies to ownership and the constitutional protections afforded to artists and scientists.

Many of the principles outlined above are self-explanatory, and some may even seem self-evident. Some of this will likely be elementary, but bear with me.

I’ll try to process the characteristics into a thick soup.

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