You!
Time has released its famous person of the year award. Guess what: Its you!
Its a symbol of your freedom of opinion, your communities and your collaboration. It was a year in which Youtube signalled the entry of the new age media, blogs exploded to about 60 million, and the long tail moved from a concept in textbooks to a viable business strategy. The concept of Web 2.0 has changed the way people look at you very differently.
2006 has been a year in which people began looking at you, not as a passive entity which viewed advertisements and went out to shop, but as an active builder of opinions, communities and value.
Its not that this movement began in 2006. Web 2.0 began with the dotcom bust in 2001. From 2002 onwards, people were getting online, posting their opinions online, reviewing books and making themselves heard. Over the years, this movement gathered strength, and soon these opinions became valuable. Primarily because these varied opinions began to be read, and the best of these opinions were voted to the top by a dear tool known as Digg. The tools which began sifting through these opinions began to deliver enormous value to the end customer, and hence became a powerful advertising weapon.
As people began to get online, they started to create their identities online. Friendster gave way to myspace and facebook, and India found its own in orkut. How orkut actually succeeeded, I will never understand. The closest I can begin to guess is that we are indeed a very voyeuristic society. We like the cover of darkness that orkut gives us, and we love reading other people's scrapbooks, watching their pictures, and making new friends. Second life is the next level of this, where identities would not only be a page, but also a virtuo-physical entity.
By end 2006, it is safe to say that Television is firmly on its way out. The internet is in, because it is not about websites or portals. The internet is about you, about video-sharing, about millions of blogs like this one, and your online identity.
The internet respects no geographic boundaries, no intellectual property, no Digital Rights Management, and no authority. If that has been the internet's greatest strength, I think it will also emerge as the biggest problem. And if anyone can provide a half decent solution to these issues, he's likely to be rich beyond his wildest dreams!
Its a symbol of your freedom of opinion, your communities and your collaboration. It was a year in which Youtube signalled the entry of the new age media, blogs exploded to about 60 million, and the long tail moved from a concept in textbooks to a viable business strategy. The concept of Web 2.0 has changed the way people look at you very differently.
2006 has been a year in which people began looking at you, not as a passive entity which viewed advertisements and went out to shop, but as an active builder of opinions, communities and value.
Its not that this movement began in 2006. Web 2.0 began with the dotcom bust in 2001. From 2002 onwards, people were getting online, posting their opinions online, reviewing books and making themselves heard. Over the years, this movement gathered strength, and soon these opinions became valuable. Primarily because these varied opinions began to be read, and the best of these opinions were voted to the top by a dear tool known as Digg. The tools which began sifting through these opinions began to deliver enormous value to the end customer, and hence became a powerful advertising weapon.
As people began to get online, they started to create their identities online. Friendster gave way to myspace and facebook, and India found its own in orkut. How orkut actually succeeeded, I will never understand. The closest I can begin to guess is that we are indeed a very voyeuristic society. We like the cover of darkness that orkut gives us, and we love reading other people's scrapbooks, watching their pictures, and making new friends. Second life is the next level of this, where identities would not only be a page, but also a virtuo-physical entity.
By end 2006, it is safe to say that Television is firmly on its way out. The internet is in, because it is not about websites or portals. The internet is about you, about video-sharing, about millions of blogs like this one, and your online identity.
The internet respects no geographic boundaries, no intellectual property, no Digital Rights Management, and no authority. If that has been the internet's greatest strength, I think it will also emerge as the biggest problem. And if anyone can provide a half decent solution to these issues, he's likely to be rich beyond his wildest dreams!
posted by shravan at
Sunday, December 17, 2006
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