Web 2.0 and Social Media
The advent of blogs and the rapid availability of site building software has made it easy for a single person to reach millions of people in a short period of time. While this was a dream 20 years ago, it has become a reality today.
With the introduction of syndication, social content can be spread across the Internet through various feeds, reaching millions of people in a matter of hours. For the first time in history, anyone is able to reach a large audience through blogs, websites, or syndication. The introduction of Web 2.0 is directly connected to this phenomenon. For the first time in history, established institutions must figure out how they will deal with this paradigm shift, a shift that will inevitably weaken their monopoly of power.
One of the most impressive things about Web 2.0 is the fact that it is not under the control of any one person, organization, or institution. In essence, everyone owns the technology, and calling it revolutionary is an understatement. Understanding the connections between Web 2.0 and social media is very important. Web 2.0 is changing social media in a way that will effect both communication and interaction.
As of this writing, there are more than 57 million blogs available on the web, and 900,000 posts each day will deal with a variety of different topics. Additional statistics have indicated that over 3 million blogs were created in the course of just a few months.
However, the power of Web 2.0 is in no way limited to just blogs. It must be emphasized that blogs are primarily composed of text and images. This does not take into consideration video content and podcasting, a new phenomenon that recently exploded with the introduction of YouTube. When you add to this the rapid adoption of high speed Internet connections,
you are rapidly seeing the development of a new Industrial Revolution. The difference with this revolution is that it is digital in nature. The biggest disadvantage to both videos and podcasts is that neither of them currently have syndication. Most of them are connected to either RSS or Atom.
As you can imagine, this has made it difficult for users to know what is going on. By looking at some statistics from Google Trends data, a number of things are made apparent. It is first apparent that podcasting has become very popular among a large number of people. The video aspect of Web 2.0 is easier to handle, since enough information for YouTube shows that the site has 60% of all the online viewers on the web.
Additional statistics show that well over 60,000 videos are being uploaded on a daily basis. What this shows is that social media plays an important role in video sharing, and it is an important part of Web 2.0. While some would argue that YouTube is not a true social media site, it shares many aspects with social media.
Web 2.0 is powerful because it will make the web more personalized. Because the needs of one person will vary from another, it is not efficient for everyone to access the same piece of information. Once information becomes personalized to suit the needs of individual viewers, the Internet will become much more interactive. Many experts have stated that the introduction of Web 2.0 is the next logical evolutionary step. It will allow the Internet to evolve into a system that can be used by everyone.
To understand the impact of Web 2.0 on social media, it is first important to define the term. With social media, communication will come in the form of a conversation. With traditional media, everything is one sided.
The information is spoon fed to you, and you either accept it or you don’t. A true social media system is one in which viewers can recieve information and communicate with each other. There must be a two way discussion. Another important requirement for social media is that people must be involved rather than institutions. While being anonymous may be discouraged, it is allowed. Honesty is also very important. Traditional media techniques in which information is controlled or manipulated is not allowed. For a system to be defined as social media, it must be very candid.
