The Problem With Web2.0

The problem with Web2.0 Aziz H. Poonawalla http://metablog.us

How do we use the web?
We consume content
We generate content
We engage in conversations
Prior to web2.0, all centralized via The Blog
Reading
Blogging
Commenting
Now, these functions are specialized and decentralized

Generating/Consuming Content
Posts
Blog
Web forums
Tumblog
Tweets
Photos and Video
Flickr
Picasa Web
YouTube
Audio
Last.fm
Podcasts
Email
Direct
Lists
Links
Del.icio.us
Google reader Shared Items
Facebook Shared Items
Twitter
Status
Twitter
Facebook
Gtalk

Conversations
Friends (1-1)
Twitter
Facebook
Friendfeed
Email
Groups (1-many)
Facebook (rooms)
Friendfeed
Blog comments
Web forums
Private email lists
Public (many-many)
Blog comments
Friendfeed
Web forums
Public email lists

Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)
Signal: stuff you want
Noise: stuff you don’t
SNR scales inversely with:
Number of content sources
Number of friends (social web)
Number of contacts (email)
To improve SNR, need to increase signal and/or decrease noise
Problem : noise scales with signal!

Social Noise
Conversations blur the line between creating and consuming content
Multiple channels result in redundant content
Same blog post by a given author might reach you via twitter, delicious, FF, etc.
Same status updates appear on twitter, identi.ca, plurk, facebook
Fragmented conversations across blog comments, FF

Filtering sucks
Many services claim to reduce noise, but are actually reducing signal
AideRSS PostRank (algorithmic)
Digg (communal)
Techmeme (algorithmic)
Echo chamber effects
Filters invariably make assumptions about what you consider signal
By relationships
By concensus
By popularity

Solution 1: Segregate services
Define specific roles for each social service
Inputs: mediums where you exclusively create content
Outputs: mediums where you exclusively promote content
Venues: mediums where you exclusively discuss content
“ Simplify, Simplify” – Henry David Thoreau

Solution 2: reduce signal
Seems counterintuitive at first
Avoid the A-listers, just pick one or two (Scoble, Winer, etc)
Declare email independence [1]
Resist temptation
New web services appear weekly
Easy to get spread too thin
Most are novel, few are useful
Avoid redundancy
Cull the herd
Use your Google Reader statistics to see which feeds you barely read
Avoid reading primary sources (ie BBC), rely on linkers instead (i.e. NewsJunk)
[1] http://www.metablog.us/social/declaration-of-email-independence/

Solution 3: be elitist
Following/friending too many people on Twitter, Facebook etc results in a firehose of updates
Impossible to see everything
Most people follow many but interact with few
Some improvement is possible
Twitter needs a “mark user as read” [1]
Facebook needs more fine-grained control over your news feed filtering
Fundamental limit to number of human interactions: Dunbar’s Number [2]
[1] http://www.metablog.us/blogging/twitter-needs-mark-user-as-read/
[2] http://www.haibane.info/2007/11/20/social-linkages-online/

Solution 4: metadata
Semantic Web
Advantages: structured data
Disadvantages: data must be structured (by something or someone)
Folksonomy
Folksonomy is not Taxonomy! [1]
Scalable, distributed, organic
Genuine wisdom of crowds (diversity) rather than groupthink [2]
Represents actual human query terms
Even the disadvantage (meta-noise [3]) is really an advantage
Overtagging creates multiple entry points
Actually increases likelihood a user will find the content
[1] http://www.metablog.us/content/taxonomy-versus-folksonomy/
[2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sometimes_crowds_arent_that_wise.php
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_noise

Inflection point
Web 2.0 represents an evolutionary decision point
How do we handle super-connectivity?
How do we handle information overload?
Present growth in social services is unsustainable
Human attention is a finite resource
Risk fragmenting into online silos
Algorithms cannot save us

Folksonomy is the Future
WP-Folksonomy plugin
Allows readers to tag posts
Access level controlled by site admin
Demos: www.talkislam.info , www.haibane.info
WP-Tagdex
(does not exist… yet [1])
Represent tags as an index rather than a cloud
Literally, human-powered index of the entire web
Combination could render algorithmic search obsolete!
[1] http://www.metablog.us/content/beyond-the-tag-cloud-the-tagdex/

Web 3.0?
OpenFriend API: allow friend/follower relationships to exist independently
Social media sites would reference the API to “import” your existing friend relationships
Distributed, open architecture akin to OpenID (anyone can run an OpenFriend server)
Blur the line between social media and MMORPGs
3D environment is just a GUI for a giant social network
Social networks are already “second life”, with business and pleasure transactions
Search engines supplanted by RSS streams created in real-time from tag queries
Live, media-rich data
Relevance of results to search intent is inherently superior
Return of the “phone book” model of information retrieval

Web 4.0?
Ubiquitous connectivity
WiMax, 4G devices
Device convergence: GPS/cell/PDA/
All online activity geotagged by default
Location information becomes as important as URL
“ Local” connections will dominate our attention
Online and offline distinction becomes less meaningful
Online “layer” over reality?
Fictional inspiration: Serial Experiments Lain, Dennou Coil

Future
What web?
(I am a singularity skeptic [1])
5 billion people worldwide still have no web access
broadband in the US lags far behind Asia (here: 5 MBps, there: 100 Mbps)
Conclusion: no matter how the web evolves, impact still limited to tiny fraction of humankind
[1] http://www.haibane.info/2008/03/02/singularity-skeptic/

http://www.metablog.us	57
http://www.haibane.info	38
url_unknown	20
http://lars.secondbrain.com	16
http://www.slideshare.net	10
http://etext.hu	7
http://1606225117.nvmodules.netvibes.com	2
http://johan.secondbrain.com	1
http://multimind.secondbrain.com	1
http://etext.mediacenter6.hu	1

The Problem With Web2.0

by Aziz Poonawalla on Jul 25, 2008

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

10 Embeds 153

Statistics

The Problem With Web2.0 — Presentation Transcript