/Culture/ The real Web 2.0
29/08/2006 | Filed under Discover > Culture
Think you are so over web 2.0? Well the websites making serious money sure as heck aren’t. But are we forgetting the people who are really powering the social web? Dan Oliver finds out…
Following the crash in 2001 the internet became a dotcom morgue, littered with the cadavers of websites that had been valued in the millions. Somehow, though, a small number of high-profile dotcom companies managed to dodge the bullets, as the ill-fated sites around them fell by the wayside. But what did these sites have that made them so special?
Arguably the biggest of these survivors was Amazon. The web’s best known general store was just as interested in getting its hands on a big slice of cash pie as the next company, but it had one unique difference: it realised that the people using its business were its business. It‘s this thinking that has driven the new generation of websites, which currently fall under the Web 2.0 banner, to embrace the social potential that the internet offers.
“To me, Web 2.0 is what happened when the tech industry realised that it wasn’t all about ecommerce, and that socialisation, interaction and communication were central to the net,” explains Danah Boyd (www.danah.org), a researcher that specialises in social networking, currently working for Yahoo! Research Berkeley. “We’re going back to the early 1990s, focusing on people not sales.”
Among the websites that are now harnessing this ‘socialisation and interaction’ are TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, MySpace, YouTube, Technorati, and Digg. Technology focused news site, Digg (digg.com), enables its visitors to dictate what stories appear on the front page (by ‘digging’ them). Started by Kevin Rose, who had previously appeared on American TechTV show The Screen Savers, Digg is totally reliant on its community members.
“We launched Digg in September 2004 as a personal project,” says Rose. “I started thinking about how it would be cool to give the control back to the community and rely on the wisdom of the masses to make editorial decisions on what content was the most relevant.”
The net mavens
Digg has gone from strength-to-strength since its launch and now has 250,000 registered members and around 550,000 unique visitors each day. However, it was never set up to make money, despite the million-dollar buyout rumours that now surround the website.
“I started Digg as a personal project out of my house. It was really a social experiment in how masses of users could control and promote content without the external editorial control,” says Rose. “After a very short time, I realised that we were on to something, as Digg was breaking news stories much faster than traditional media.”
Thanks to the social elements within Web 2.0 sites, and the technologies that power them, there has been a shift in how content is created, consumed and delivered. Instead of merely viewing content on the net, we can now contribute to our favourite sites, and even edit them! The entire concept is based upon user involvement. With Digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the home page, the users do.”
However, despite having half a million unique visitors each day, it still only takes a few hundred diggs to promote a story to the front page, and a user only needs to contribute (digg), and comment on around 50 stories to make it into the top one per cent of Digg’s registered users. So, despite the massive traffic many of these sites are getting, it would appear that Web 2.0 is being powered by a relatively small number of people: these are the net mavens.
According to Wikipedia – which is also currently run by mavens – the definition of a maven (also known as a mavin or mayvin) is “an expert in a particular field, usually one who is self-appointed and who seeks to pass his knowledge on to others”. Todd Rosin is a maven. Living in Seattle and working in financial services communications, at 42 he’s clocked up more air miles than most, and, after discovering TripAdvisor.com several years ago, Todd is now its number one reviewer. “I’m a huge believer in the value of insider word-of-mouth, so the website caught my eye,” says Rosin. “I spent hours at the site that day, reading reviews and prioritising what I wanted in a hotel and matching that list against the reviews. I couldn’t wait to travel and write my first review!”
According to Rosin, who wrote reviews for his school newspaper as a youngster, the main benefit to providing so much content for free is purely altruistic, and he takes real satisfaction from helping others.
“I want to help people travel more successfully,” Rosin explains. “I think helping people honestly know what to expect when they travel somewhere is good karma. Maybe someone will do the same for me, someday. In fact, my fellow reviewers at TripAdvisor do that already!”
.net discovers what motivates one of Digg’s top users
With some sites there’s almost a compulsion to contribute, especially when it’s so simple to do so (it only takes one click to digg a story). Kevin Rose believes users are ‘compelled to contribute’ to digg, because they think the stories belong in front of a mass audience. Thomas Clifford, a system administrator from Wisconsin, is Digg’s number two contributor, and he certainly fits Rose’s profile of a Digg user.
“I just started finding stories from obscure sites, sifted through them and then forwarded them to Digg,” says Clifford. “It was a challenge. It became a game. I wanted to see if my story would make it to the home page. It was almost an obsession of sorts. I would check back every free moment I had to see the placement of my stories. I’m certainly not looking for any reward or glory from this. If some reward or glory were to come, then sure that would be awesome, but I’m not looking for it – I did it to help build what I thought was a great idea.”
Unexpected rewards
Like Todd, Gail Cooke has written in the past and loves the freedom that writing on the internet provides. Gail is currently ranked number four in the top contributors to Amazon.com – which many would consider to be the original Web 2.0 site – and she has reviewed thousands of products from her home in Texas. “Right now, it seems to me the action is on the web,” says Gail. “Where else can your words be read by so many? I’ve been a reviewer for most of my adult life. I did a stint as a book editor for newspapers, followed by freelancing and then as more and more newspapers were buying reviews from the wires I felt the place to be was the web.”
As well as fulfilling her passion for writing, and gaining a positive reputation among the Amazon.com community, Gail has found some unexpected benefits to being a maven: “I’ve met some interesting people. If you’ve been on the public discussion board at Amazon, you may have noted that there’s a gettogether planned in New York. I believe they’ve been doing this for a while now,” she says. “And a couple of years ago Amazon flew its top reviewers to Seattle, which was fun and very nice of it to do.”
Websites that rely on their visitors for content clearly appreciate the contributions they make, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that maybe they should be financially rewarding those that populate their sites, but mention the idea of a monetary incentive to a maven and you’ll get exactly the same response every time. “Absolutely not,” exclaims Rosin. “This is the power of the internet, and as much content as I may provide, the value of the information I get from other reviews is more than enough compensation.”
Despite being difficult for many of us to understand, those that contribute to the social web don’t want, nor expect, to be paid for what they do, because they have lots of other reasons for getting involved. “There are other incentives besides money, you know: fame, attention, respect, appreciation, reputation,” says Danah Boyd. “Do I think that my friends should charge me every time I hear them recommend a restaurant to me? Definitely not. I wouldn’t ask those friends for recommendations. And if they were getting paid for sharing them, I would question their incentive.”
A labour of love
Those providing this free content take it as a slight on their character when you discuss the possibility of remuneration. However, this doesn’t mean that support for Web 2.0 is universal, and there are strong critics of the provision of gratis content.
“A small percentage of the population enjoys doing things just for the sake of learning, exploring, helping, etc, and we hold them up as examples of why Web 2.0 is the future. But that isn’t altruism, it’s selfishness,” writes Rob May, the co-founder of the Carnival of the Capitalists (www.thecotc.com) and Jotzel (www.jotzel.com). “Those people do those things to fill personal needs of ego, knowledge, or whatever… The point of all this is if your business model is built on the goodness of people’s hearts, it is going to fail.”
It’s easy to be cynical about the free content that drives the social web, but no one is forced to provide content to Web 2.0 sites, and it would appear that people contribute to them because of motivating factors other than money. And, however difficult it is for some of us to understand, there’s something reassuring about that, something that we can’t help but appreciate. Go mavens!
Comments
Lodge / 09/09/2006 / 20:12 / http://criquelodge.com
Rob is partially wrong. He has misjudged the actions of most people, calling free expression of thought selfishness is very biased and wrong to say. Reality is that people want to express their opinions and communicate with others in a productive way, to spread love and understanding. This is what the web should teach everyone. Equality.
Andre / 18/11/2006 / 11:01 / http://www.geldmachtspass.de/
I think Web 2.0 is an honest way to communicate over the internet. I mean Google has just spend over a Billion Dollar for a Web 2.0 Website. The users don´t want to read any more, they want to create their own stuff. Most of these companies don´t have to earn money via advertisments because they get a lot of money from venture capitalists
Michelle / 29/11/2006 / 03:54 / http://www.webvideogold.com
I also think that Rob is wrong.
Web 2.0 is a natural offspring of information overload, consumer cynicism and the need to trust someone to tell us which way is up.
There is simply too much info on the narrowest of topics for any 1 person to "know it all" mavens do the info sorting and sifting of the facts for the rest of the info minions.
Sure the mavens get an ego stroke -but if they start betraying their loyal followers with their recommendations, they will soon be dethroned- and that is the real power of web2.0
Dejan / 05/12/2006 / 09:54
Web 2.0 means democracy in its roots, and digg is one of its frontiers.
But there is a Phantom Menace on the horizon in the form of national telcos who would like to regain the ownership over information: they are backed up by governments and former telco-equipment-vendor giants who lost their share due to Web 2.0 players, like Skype; just look to their effort to deploy IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) as a way to limit, control and re-channel information flow, again.
Ira Roth / 14/03/2007 / 13:34 / http://www.mutual-funds-advisor.com
Internet is going to a whole new direction - becoming not only a huge library of free information but also a common place where people can interact with each other, communicate, share their thoughts, opinions, feelings - enjoy full liberty. That is a good thing! Internet's new look is Web 2.0 and it is ridiculous to use words like "selfishness" for such a good thing.
Alex / 17/10/2007 / 12:42 / http://www.aroundgreece.com
I don't think that there will be a real Web2.0 crash so to speak. More of a move away from Web2.0 feel sites, to something completely new and different.
Lets just wait and see whether we head towards a Web2.1 or straight to the Web3.0
Chris / 29/06/2008 / 02:42 / http://www.islands-cyclades.com
I think that also mavens want to earn money in the future too, not only "fame, attention, respect, appreciation, reputation".
@ Alex
The Web2.0 will crash, when nobody wants to share his personal information. But will this ever happen?
