Not my words, but the headline from an article in last Thursdays (26^th July) Independent.

In the article Michael Savage looks at the pro's and con's of joining sites like Facebook and questions whether the whole thing around social networking is just a fad. He concludes that the bubble shows no sign of bursting and points out that if Rupert Murdoch (News International is the owner of MySpace) and others such as Yahoo and Microsoft are coming into the market, then big business should take note.

Whats my take:

Social networking sites are just the tip of the iceberg. The consumers are pointing us in the direction to go and showing us what the web could be used for.

As an example, we listened with great interest to Jon Bernstein who heads up Channel 4's Digital strategy out at the seminar we attended last week.

Channel 4 have been embracing web 2.0 (see Ed's blog for the debate on titles) for over 2 years now, and we have to say we are pretty impressed by the things they have been doing. The pic at the top is the picture they drew to show the areas they are involved in, but let me summarise:

Social Networks - there are over 30 channel 4 groups existing on Facebook

Virtual Networks - C4 had a a virtual interview with Vince Cable (Lib Dem) on Second Life

Crowd Sourcing - this is an area that they are seriously looking at

Blogs - these are open to everyone on the network

There were more examples, but I think these make the point - these guys are using the web to reach out to people in the new mediums where people are spending their time. The adoption of the web and the latest uses of technology are more than a fad - they are becoming more pervasive all the time.

I will leave the final word to Adam Boulton (who incidentally interviewed both David Milliband and Ed Milliband in Second Life) when he said that when it comes to all the latest things that are coming through: "what we know is that we don't know".

Comments

There is currently 1 comment about this blog.

Michael Horne, about 1 year ago

I've just started to explore Facebook, and I'm already developing my first application based around my hobby. What's the point of Facebook? I guess the point of it is that it is there to be used. If you don't like it, don't use it. It just goes to show how many people like it. It is expanding all the time due to it's open development framework so it not only satisfies the basic user who just wants to use it for e-socialising, but also for the techies who want to play. The bigger question is, and shall remain: What is Web 2.0? There are many different definitions (Wikipedia being the most loved). Perhaps it should remain non-defined and we should instead accept the idea that Web 2.0 is simply the growth of the internet on a tangential basis towards something which is all-encompassing and is all things to all people. -- Michael Horne

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