Social networking and web 2.0
Posted on | July 20, 2007 | 8 Comments
You know, I’ve never ‘got’ the whole ‘web 2.0′ thing. I know there’s a big hue and cry about it, anyone who’s anyone in the net media seems to be throwing out kudos here and opinions there about it but really, it’s just another buzzword.
It doesn’t mean a damned thing – if it did the average surfer would understand what it means instantly – but we don’t.
Now, social networking – that means something. But maybe not the same thing to me that it means to all the people busy writing about it and congratulating themselves on their cleverness and insight (you know, the pro-bloggers who like to write about blogging and very little else) I know this will make me sound like a bit of a net granny but.. It wasn’t all like this in my day!
Aside from blogging, my personal use of the internet for surfing has not changed much over the last 12 years or so (my god, I just had to reckon that up.. Now I do feel like a net granny!) I first started using it on the manchester university computers while waiting for friends to finish up in the labs, they’d log me on and leave me to play – in fact that’s how I got my first email address.
Fisted@hotmail.com (password was ‘ouch’ lol)
That was me way back when (no need to try emailing it, I stopped using that particular address years ago – right about the time I left the band of the same name in fact) But that was what got me hooked.
Through hotmail I discovered the MSN chat rooms, they were a wonder to me – I still wriggle slightly in shame at my first faux pas. I’d been signed into a chat room and some people very nicely made me welcome, there was a little banter and I tried to join in by making a joke about the way somebody had used the wrong spelling of a word and so totally changed the context of what they’d said – the response was an apology for their terrible english – it turned out they were chinese, I was mortified – and astounded.
That was the moment I realised just how fabulous the internet was – I was communicating in real time with someone from the other side of the world. Ok, so I cocked up that first conversation but I learned very quickly and soon became addicted to the chat rooms.
My favourites were the abuse and hellifiknowquix rooms (The abuse room was a great stress reliever and the quickest way to meet people of a like mind *grin* you can tell a lot about a person from the way they both insult and react to insults) Anyhow in these rooms I met many a person that I went on to meet in real life (including a group of Portuguese people who invited me over for a very enjoyable holiday – but that’s another story) from there I was told about Uboot.
Now remember, back then mobile phones were not as they are today and as a poor student I couldn’t really afford one but online that didn’t matter – Uboot allowed you to save phone numbers and send free sms (they don’t allow it any more, now you have to pay for that service) so of course I signed up – it was a quick way of keeping in contact with my more affluent friends – and a way of meeting other people since it was also a profile site cum personal message board.
On Uboot I met several people, 2 of whom I’m still in irregular contact with today and it was these 2 people who introduced me to faceparty.
Back then it wasn’t quite the dating site it is now, it really was more like an online pub (an old mans pub where you can chat instead of shout over loud music) a comfortable place to put a little about yourself and connect with others who professed similar interests and mental wavelengths – the emphasis wasn’t so much on dating but on socialising in general, the instant chat feature was brilliant and made it a step up from uboot because it combined the profile/ messageboard with a personal chatroom feel.
My how things change..
I’m actually awaiting the next stage in the facebook phenomena because it’s really just a logical step up from all the other profile sites out there, it’s taken aspects of friends reunited, uboot, faceparty and myspace and mixed ‘em all up in one place.
Sadly it too will become another dating monstrosity *sigh* It’s inevitable.
I’d like to think I’m wrong but I’ve been a member of several profile sites over the years and it’s distressing how few people join up that are simply looking to socialise as opposed to ‘meet someone’ – which brings me to blogs and twitter.
I’ve already posted about how I was introduced to twitter and how incestuous the world online seems to be, but twitter is something different – it’s a real meeting place.
With a blog you can follow a persons thoughts and get to feel that you know them, you form a relationship of sorts with the writer and through comments and a blog of your own you can interact and build upon that relationship over time (as I have done with at least three of you now reading this) The same thing can happen with twitter, but in a much more immediate way – and people are not really talking about hooking up for dating purposes on there (well, ok, some are but it’s inevitable that would happen, look at sms and the whole ‘dogging’ thing) on the whole, they’re talking about meeting to share interests in the same way people used to with me on faceparty before the meat market mentality took over.
It’s good to see that kind of ‘innocence’ back online, it generates far more enthusiasm over the long term than a flurry of dates ever could.
Now blogging is incestuous, the blogging ‘community’ or the blogosphere can’t really be described in any other way – my former post explains how I came to that conclusion and Rob Hinchcliffe highlights the downsides of that incestuousness.
Mind you, isn’t that how any form of networking seems after a while? Only people interested in being social and networking will do certain things and go to certain places – this means that after a while, if you participate long enough you’ll start to see all the same faces.
It happened on Mybloglog (seriously, go visit a few blogs and look at the pictures on the sidebar widget, 9 times out of 10 it’s the same people who appear before you) and you’ll find that most of the people you recognise from mybloglog are the ones found on every other blog networking site, these people then form cliques and..
Wait, we’re back in the real world again. Only it’s online.
I guess that’s what all those clever people mean by ‘Web 2.0′ it’s online mimicry of real life, people meet up, side off and form little groups all happy within their clique – whether you’re the geeks, the entrepenaurs, the writers, musicians or just people into cross stitch, you have your group and you’re happy to network within it.
To me ‘Web 2.0′ just means ‘its a small world’, online or offline people are still people and that’s something I think a lot of these clever writers forget.
Comments
8 Responses to “Social networking and web 2.0”
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July 21st, 2007 @ 12:44 am
What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 is pastel colours, rounded quare buttons and Internet apps with the last vowel dropping in the name. IE “Flickr”
July 21st, 2007 @ 11:15 am
Actually web2.0 is moving from a 1 way web where you came , you read, you left and that was all that could happen to a 2 way web where you can add and contribute and see other contributions.
Web2.0 is more than the increase in design, weve seen that since html1.0 it is the increase in social and community interactivity of a site and its users. It is Blogs, Twitter, ning and facebook its about building and creating sites for a brand as a community with a shared interest.
Vics Im glad you blogged it and I passed it to the usual collective as you saw and then this morning I began updating my Ning profile and I did this
I wrote about what im involved in , and wow it is scary
http://grasshoppers.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=901776%3ABlogPost%3A431
But thanks for writing.
July 23rd, 2007 @ 7:17 am
I remember in the formative days of AOL and the internet in general I used to meet 2 or 3 new girls a week in person after chatting with them on-line. Nowadays, that would raise more than a few eyebrows. Back then it was easier to trust people not to be deranged, but now we live in a more cautious age.
I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.
July 23rd, 2007 @ 10:50 am
Nice article.
July 23rd, 2007 @ 11:35 am
I still dont get what web 2.0 means?
I’,m confused????
July 23rd, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
I’m telling you Web 2.0 is Pastel Colours, Squared button with rounded corners and app names where they drop the last vowel.
You can learn more about Web 2.0 at http://www.dvorak.org/blog/
July 24th, 2007 @ 11:53 am
It is quite interesting to see how the web has evolved to web 2.0 . To find out what it is go to: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Another important online tool that has evolved with web 2.0 are the online communities like facebook and backup services such as zyb(http://zyb.com) which let you do all sorts of wonderful things which weren’t possible in the early ages of the internet.
August 11th, 2007 @ 10:59 pm
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