Much like the Apple corporation markets its products on generic functions that any computer can do (organizing photos, playing music, surfing the net, utilizing email), so was Web 2.0 synthesized to make possible for the blog-happy masses to do what had been possible since the early days of the internet with a little more ease and integration with their blog network.
Don’t get me wrong, though! Social interaction online isn’t a bad thing, by any means… but until my online/social journelism ‘profs started telling me how cool and neato Web 2.0 was, I’d never really cared about the doings of others online, and none of the innovations struck me as particularly inventive, indeed they just remodeled simple functions performed by many websites & computer utilities and made them easy for the interested to make use of. In other words, I don’t see what the fuss is about, and with me, old habits die harder than horror movie villains.
I just can’t get into a mindset that is friendly to this phenominon. Why would I care what my peers are looking at, bookmark-wise ( del.icio.us)? I have my own interests to persue online, and most of those are not topics that are enjoyed by many people I know. People who want to spread things they find cool to their friends traditionally runs into a dead end (the civilized world regards this as spamming when you get it in email form) and friends can and do share links of interest via MSN…I fail to see a practical use for del.icio.us other than voyeuristic cyber-stalking. I have my own interests, I do not need to peruse the doings of others online. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want them checking in on what I’ve been looking into either…the internet is about anonymity, isn’t it?
Hell, I never bookmark anything online anyway. Life’s too short to trod the same old ground, unless it bears exceptional fruit. Like Wikipedia.
Twitter is an entire web-network based on a simple side-function of Facebook. One of these sites ought to sue the other, since they do the same thing and one of them no doubt was inspired by the other. I wouldn’t be bothered to go to an entire website designed to change my facebook status, much less check it (and add ALL the people who’re already on my facebook…keep in mind that facebook adds its own contacts from the entire history of your MSN contact list, twitter requires me to add them all manually. Gimme a break.)
Some bloggers have more existential reasons for opposing twitter, and I’m inclined to agree with these seven tenants of philosophy.
Digg, however, I think has a neat concept behind it. I wouldn’t be bothered to use it for anything exciting (I prefer fark.com), but then Fark doesn’t integrate with blogs and this is a cool way to share articles of interest on your blog (if you “digg” that kind of thing. heh.)
Perhaps I’m hostile to all this Web 2.0 business because none of it strikes me as particularly new…its just simple gadgets remodeled to integrate with blogs, none of it makes my online-life any richer or more fulfilling, and thus I wouldn’t change my online routine to make use of any of it. I suspect that Web 2.0 friendly behavior has to be learned with a professional stake in the blogosphere or online communications, and not by a person who’s got their own well-developed online habits.
Facebook is an example of a social networking site that takes a few good ideas (scattered in their own form across dozens of Web 2.0 sites) and throws ‘em all together with ease of use for the user. And that’s quite enough for me.
