What do you want from your Web?

We are now in a new oncoming storm of what the Internet will provide for us in a new breed duly named Web 2.0. There are many definitions for this and I'll leave you to your own research to determine the history of why it's named that, but I think it is important to recognize that the evolution of the Internet took a hard divide in its direction in the year 2000.

 

Convenience was the answer. The question was, "How much do you need do you need?" - the Venture Capitalist gleamed. They built the Tower of Babel in a sense. Putting worth to unproved business ideas, it didn't matter the actual revenue, it's the idea that sells. It was an ideal time full of idealist and they literally turned the economy to an new height and then upside down for a time. But was it all bad?

 

I think the massive innovation brought on insight for lessons learned for businesses today that we could not of fathomed. Everything we had dreamed about what computers could do from the days we spent 10 hours of programing just to make your name scroll across the screen in a rectangular motion had at that point started to become a reality. It seemed then that anything would soon be possible. Flying cars, computers could talk with great speech recognition, virtual reality that was well like reality. None of that occurred of course. We did however, focus on getting groceries to you within an hour. That didn't occur for very long.

 

So where are we now. What has Web 2.0 provided. I mean I'm still stuck in traffic on my commute to work, my computer still doesn't understand a thing I say after hours of reading nursery rhymes to it, and virtual reality is for really bad games and nothing more. I still can't get a box of Cheerios delivered to my house.

 

The new incarnation of the Internet is a tad bit smarter. It focuses on you. Instead of having your content conveniently provided to you it is assembled so that you choose what you want when you want it. In other words, it is user based and ranked on content. There is so much content on the Internet, it is absolutely impossible to absorb even highlights of the highlights. Now it is impossible to build a successful site that users don't have control over the outcome or at very least provide feedback on content.

 

Great examples of course of personal content are blogs, my two favorites of course, http://www.mdonahoe.com and http://www.unojack.net. I'm biased of course on those two. But look at the incredible success of YouTube.com. A company that just sold to Google for 1.65 billion dollars. The concept, merely to have users upload videos, people rank the videos as they watch it. The homepage shows you a list of the most watched videos. Not to complicated.

 

For news, digg.com is a site that users vote whether or not you like a news article or "digg it" which is sort of like a vote. The news article moves up closer to the first page or home page by its popularity. Digg has now added videos and podcasts as well which come from all over the Internet. So when you go to this site, basically the worst is somewhat weeded out for you. The result is a real-time pulse on what Internet users want to read, watch, or listen too.

 

Podcasting to me is an amazing source. For myself I listen to the news every day, a talk show, and I just finished an Astronomy course from University of Ohio. I won't get college credit for the course, but that's not the point. I've always wanted to take an Astronomy course, but it was never part of my degree programs. Also, in the middle of this course I took a full month off because I was busy. These are recordings available for download at any time. ITunes ranks podcasts by user reviews to make them easier to find. Also there are sites such as podcastalley.com where you vote for your favorites once a month.

 

I think you may see a trend on all of this which is the ranking and search capabilities. Ranking by user voting and Search is imperative in any of these sites because it is what assists in the ranking. You can't talk about Web 2.0 without giving the honorable mention to the King of Search - google.com. They have revolutionized the Internet by virtue of a Search tool and integrated a Marketing strategy to boot. Stop! Let us not forget that Google's main line of business is Marketing and Search is there assistant to do so. Or is it the other way around. Only Google really knows this one I suppose.

 

Google's revolutionary new tools such as Google Earth, Gmail, Gtalk, Notebook, Calendar, etc. etc. I use them all! I'm such a google addict it is on my weekly planning to visit the Google Labs site each week to see if any new toys have arrived. But why. Why does Google put these toys out there for us, most all of them don't throw advertisements in your face. Why would they give me so much free stuff? It's simple, they learn how to advertise with every keystroke you type, every note you send, every image you save. Don't worry it's not spying, no human being is reading your stuff. But Google's servers are analyzing keywords. Trend analysis is being auto produced in real-time. The more users interact with Google, the better their advertising will get. The better their advertising gets, the better toys we get to play with...

 

Web 2.0 is about user interaction which will drive the content availability. The user chooses. Where does the future lie - my guess which is as good as anyones, is better content. Television shows just for the Internet that are far better than what you watch on the traditional tube, count on it. Sponsors could attach themselves permanently to a video that is downloaded, giving themselves much better exposure than a commercial time slot on a network. Music that is not endorsed / pushed by a record label, instead artists can created and sell through a medium and users decide what they want to listen to. Unbiased news media, or biased, you decide on your own flavor.

 

It's coming.