Social Web 3.0

Technology is to the point where the average person can produce high quality content for very little money. On top of that, websites are constantly opening up for people to share this content; For video, there's YouTube and Vimeo, for audio there is MySpace and purevolume1, and for text there are too many ways to publish online for me to count. Unfortunately just having an outlet doesn't guarantee quality.

Well, what about all that crap?

Anyone who has spent a day online could probably show a lot of really good content that they had seen that day, but the majority of it would be crap. I'm not going to mince words on this subject; most of the content on the internet is terrible. The real question is whether this matters or not. Here's a few ideas about why this may not matter:

Terrible content doesn't get word-of-mouth— Most of the good content I see online has been recommended to me by someone else. I have friends that tell me, "You have to see this!" and follow all sorts of sites that do the same for all their followers. Now, word-of-mouth doesn't guarantee that I'm being sent to something I'll enjoy, but certainly someone enjoyed it enough to recommend it, meaning there is probably another who will enjoy it too.

Content sharing websites like YouTube and purevolume have ways of highlighting the best content— It's hard to find a site hosting content that doesn't have some way of rating the content on it. On both YouTube and purevolume, the entire front page is dedicated to content that has been visited the most or has gained the most peer recommendation, along with paid content promotion. This is basically the official sort of word-of-mouth.

Content from traditional sources isn't guaranteed to be good— How many TV shows are simply terrible, how many movies are near unwatchable, and how much music just sucks? The assumption is that traditional content publishers have a process of review to make sure that what they put out is good, but that assumption doesn't ring true when you take a look at the content. The music industry is especially in a sorry state—I can't recommend enough that you watch the documentary Before the Music Dies.2 The music industry seldom develops artists these days, opting to record what's hot now and try to fix it's deficiencies after the fact digitally. I suppose that's a bad criticism of developing good content, since somebody must listen to all that dime-a-dozen pop music, however it is still a good argument about how poorly the industry develops content. Keep in mind that someone like Ray Charles might not make it today, just because he's blind. Led Zeppelin got it's name from being told their band would go down like a "lead zeppelin." Just like the Mythbusters3, however, we all found out a lead zeppelin can fly.

Skip past this paragraph if you don't want to hear about producing your own music

Because I am a musician, you get to sit through my opinions on "user generated content" in terms of music. Alright, you don't have to sit through it, but you might learn something. When (or lately "if") I release an album, I will release it online on my own web site. With a little effort, making a professional recording isn't hard. You can buy mixers with computer interfaces which you can plug all your instruments and microphones into to record on your computer. Apple ships GarageBand to record with all it's computers, free. My own setup includes an 8 channel mixer and two professional microphones with cables and stands, all for around $500. My point here is that recording your own quality audio is very possible. The benefit is if I release my own album, I can circumvent the recording industries fears and misconceptions about audio in the digital age. I could—and would—release an album supported by donations. I'd have the ability to give people the music online—for free—and ask for people to donate if they'd like for me to continue recording. That way, if my album sucks and no one enjoyed it, I'll know that I either need to work to do better or stop altogether.

Overall, I don't think you can really put rules and limitations on user generated content, just based on it's quality. You can't stop people from making terrible content, it will happen anyways. The beauty of it is the amazing content that comes through too.

With blogging becoming more and more mainstream everyday, something new had to take it’s place as the newest personal publishing format, right? Micro-blogging1 is that new format, and it's really no more than status updates—Micro-blog post’s are almost always less than 200 characters and usually used as a means to update friends or anyone to what you’re doing.

Twitter is the micro-blog

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?2

Twitter is essentially synonymous with micro-blogging. Of course there are alternatives, but you’d be hard pressed to find one nearly as popular as Twitter. So what is it? Twitter lets you post up to 140 characters, and then follow what people are tweeting3. It’s definitely drawn a crowd—you can even read tweets from Darth Vader. More seriously, even CNN updates with it’s breaking headlines on Twitter. Since the only limit to what you can do with Twitter is the length of what you have to say, it leaves lots of creative potential. Businesses could post product releases, famous people can use it to boost their popularity and exposure.

Our society moves so fast that we don’t give anything much time. In the online community, there’s an acronym, “tl;dr” which stands for “too long; didn’t read.” And while the online community can take this idea of satisfaction now to the extreme, it’s easily seen in business and education as well. Businesses are looking for what can make the most money today; Students stop paying attention the longer their lecture is.4

In this sort of society, 140 characters is set up to rule.

What could kill Twitter?

The first post by someone answering the essential Twitter question, “What are you doing?” is likely to be “trying to figure this thing out.”5

With all new things, a relatively small group of people adopt it and love it; the rest have no idea what it is or why they need it. I’m fairly connected to the group of people that love Twitter, and still had a hard time figuring it out (saying that as if I’ve actually figured it out.) The first question I had is why I really need this. I already update my status from time to time on Facebook, and while it’s interesting to browse people’s status when I’m bored, boredom is really the only motivator for that. The second question was if I knew enough people on Twitter for it to even be useful to me. Unfortunately for this writing, the answer to that question is no. Even if my friends have heard of Twitter, they’re still hung up on the issue of why. Michael Simmons, a web developer out of Chicago said, “I like it, I just don’t use it, because I think of it as a ‘what am I doing’ thing, and I just work.”

On the opposite side, those who have many friends on Twitter can get burnt out on the concept. Just like with blogs and videos on the internet, most of it is just crap that you move through on the way to the good morsels. Compounding that is the fact that the people with lists of friends on Twitter already have full RSS feeds of blogs and other content they read, as well as full email inboxes and an IM account full of friends. Talk about content burnout. Remember, the idea behind things like Twitter is to absorb content in short form; What’s the difference between long form content and a bucket full of short form content?

The future is bleak?

All that said, I think Twitter is shaping the future of content on the web. I remember the days when blogs—then weblogs—were new and there was even more controversy than there is now on their existence, with only a core group of adopters. Today, blogs are everywhere; People get payed to blog.

I think as Twitter grows, people are going to learn how to use it better. Just like how out of so many blogs, a few great blogs rise to the top, I think the same will happen with Twitter. I don’t necessarily think that Twitter is for everybody—neither are blogs—however I think it is perfect for certain people.

“Web 3.0,” you ask, “Aren't we just starting Web 2.0?”
Honestly, I think it's a bad idea to try to version the internet, but if people are going to call the web version 2.0, then I'm naturally going to push the envelope.

The problem with trying to label the web with a version is it's all too often changing. I began creating for the web all the way back in 1997, and I can tell you now that we should be a whole lot farther than 2.0. The web has shifted from Tim Berners-Lee's idea to share scientific documents, to every one creating their own “Under Construction” website—I had one too—to a legitimate content source and so on.

All of this is to illustrate a simple point: The world is changing fast, and the web is changing faster. Today's social web is soon going to be yesterdays social web, so where is all this heading? What influence will today's social applications have on tomorrow's? What lessons are we going to learn from today's social web?

Let's figure it out.