Why Person Of The Year Doesn’t Matter or Why There Is No Web2.0
Many bloggers have celebrated the election to Person of The Year 2006, each in their own style. But does it really matter? Has the Digital Information highway really changed? Forget it!
This was nothing more than a brilliant piece of marketing by TIME Magazine. ProBlogger Darren Rowse called it linkbaiting, but there is more behind this.
The online cover story was an example article how to please an otherwise critical, savvy internet : an article drenched with many beloved buzzwords. And I am not speaking about MySpace users or (the average) YouTube freaks, no meant are the bloggers who create the New Media. Those who have beaten the Pros at their own game.
The New Web was even called a revolution.
Wait a second!
Is their such a thing as a New Web? Web2.0, is there really something like a new internet, knocking the features of the old internet away?
No there isn’t! We hype ourselves and we are good at it. What the critical and self-honest observer sees in the New Web is merely another brilliant piece of marketing. There is no such thing as Web 2.0.
I can already see some of the readers shake their head now, but let me explain you.
Buzzword 1 : Web 2.0.
Surely the internet has become more beautifull. Surely there are more features, the internet just works better today. It is smoother, goes faster and will continue to improve in the next years. But this is nothing else as the natural evolution of a new technology. How old is the internet? Can we agree on 15 years?
Lets have a look back at the Toyota Corolla 15 years ago and compare it with the actual one. Is the actual one a revolutionary car? No. It still is a car : 4 wheels, an engine and a roof above your head. But the car still doesn’t hover like they did in The Jetsons. Now that would be a revolution.
Or broadband coffee coming straight out of your laptop.
Buzzword 2 : User Generated
I know everyone likes to hear this, but let me take you your illusions away : You are not innovating. The Internet was user generated from Day 1. Anyone remember the good old Usenet?
USENET, USEr NETwork.
Users read and post e-mail-like messages (called “articles”) to a number of distributed newsgroups, categories that resemble bulletin board systems in most respects.The medium is distributed among a large number of servers, which store and forward messages to one another. Individual users download and post messages…
Many of us will remember the hours spend helping other people with their computer problems and later shared software1 and media files.
And of course the oh so legendary flame wars.
How much is this different from the Web 2.0? The interface? I agree. The backend? Don’t we still store on servers and download to read? Even today, in the middle of the social experiment called Web2.0, we flame and rave in the comments2.
Buzzword(s) 3 : Community, Collaboration and Social Network.
May I refer once more to the USENET? The savvy, geeky3 community has always helped the online friend. We are that altruistic.
And we have always known that helping for free could result in some financial bonuses. The odd person who is willing to pay you for your help, based on your shown knowledge.
You might even become a paid blogger, blogging in any blog network, blog for your local newspaper’s online presence or who knows… become a blogger for ZDNET or Reuters.
But then again, also that is nothing new. Microsoft MVP, anyone?
So what did really happen yesterday?
One more Old Media Publisher [sic] hugged the internet. And bought many souls.
But we still have our knowledge portals where we spend many hours daily reading the news, we still participate to communities and we share our knowledge, helping others for free.
Our homepage is a blog now, no collection of static pages anymore. Many even tried the odd CMS and now realize the CMS actually has more accurate options to categorize than the blog platform does. Luckily we have tags and uncluttered tag clouds today.
The USENET, newsletters have become bulletin boards (although my inbox still suffers under the load of many mailing lists) and the ones who use MySpace as their homepage surely didn’t embellish our cyber world.
The only thing that really happened in Cyber 2006 is that the internet hit main stream. Is this due to us or is it a normal evolution of technology?
And TIME Magazine embraced enough of otherwise critical bloggers to start a new platform online : TIME Magazine, the FastLane… news brought to you by [professional] bloggers, even before we read the news.
Who wouldn’t want to write for TIME Magazine?
1 Without USENET, there probably wouldn’t have been *NIX [History of Linux]
2 Why don’t you doflame and rave in the comments. I’ll do my best to continue to provoke. 
3 What happened to the term nerd? Is dotcom nerd a geek in today’s Internet?
[tags]Jack Of All Blogs, News, Internet, TIME, Social Network, Collaboration, user generated, MVP, technology, Web 2.0, web20, buzzwords[/tags]
