Web 2.0 reflections

There was a turning point in this assignment that I will forever be grateful to the subject for. It was when I realised that those linked into web 2.0’s potentials weren’t the ones out of sync with the real world. I was the one not in sync. The way information is gathered and disseminated has changed and whether I work in the field of information management or not, if I want to understand and engage in our world it is important that I explore the potential of web technologies. The Internet and its applications are also incredibly exciting, once you get into them, and this is what this assignment has forced me to do. I am now excited about the world online.

This does not mean that I am not still cynical about this online world’s ability to improve our lives on a grand scale - and I still don't trust it enough to forsake pen and paper altogether. But I can certainly appreciate the value of web technologies. Though searching for information can be faster and easier with the range of web 2.0 tools available, it requires time to set these tools up. Also, many sites just enable me to search for information that is completely useless and often incorrect. I also tend to do an awful lot of printing, but perhaps that is just me being old fashioned. I can see the potential of Twitter but I need to log onto it more often. I don’t have Internet on my phone (I know, so 2008) so I don’t really feel linked into the short, regular, instant-information, message world yet. But I am determined to make more of an effort on that front.
What I can no longer be ignorant about is the web’s ability to spread information faster than anything before it. I am eternally grateful to my RSS feeds for the range of information I receive on a regular basis and to my group members for introducing me to new concepts and resources.

I have realised with this assignment that to get the most out of my own little digital world (and with my own bookmarks, RSS feeds and blog it does feel like my own) I need to set some time aside to organise it more efficiently. I need to bookmark more often and more effectively. At work I need to log into my sites (Delicious, Twitter, Google Reader) and keep them buzzing away to tap into when required. It is a new way of working for me and is going to take some time to get used to. But at least I now feel connected to the other (very real it turns out) digital world.

Throughout this assignment is was also easy to get caught up in the small stuff (I spent an hour creating my Twitter wallpaper) and there was a lot of frustration along the way. I fiddled around with my bookmark icon for ages trying to work out how to move it from the top of the page where it had been sitting for days. Only tonight have I found the .html script gadget on the side bar, the time I would have saved if I had noticed that earlier! I also seem to be following fellow group members as a Gemma Walsh on Google Friend and WalshGemma the blogger, which seems convoluted and strange. I have obviously done something wrong there…

Working as part of a group has also been a rewarding part of this assignment, though I fell like we are all just starting to get to know each other. The six weeks has flown by, there was a lot to cover and I know I didn’t communicate with others as much as I wanted to. It has been great to share our experiences and I certainly feel less alone doing this assignment when linked with a group.

Though this is the end of this assignment it is certainly not the end of my Web 2.0 adventure. I don’t think I could have imagined I would learn so much in six weeks. The adventure has only just begun.

Social Beings

BEFORE
This time last year I had just returned from a nine month journey, mostly overland from the UK to Australia. Throughout the trip I regularly used Flickr, Tripadvisor and Couchsurfing sites as my social networking and/or bookmarking tools.
Flickr enabled me to look up the areas we were going to, photos were labelled for other travellers, and friends and families were kept up to date as to where we were (2littlehobbos). Tripadvisor helped us avoid stinky hostels and couchsurfing enabled us to stay with local students throughout Iran.
But the trip is over and I have not looked at any of these sites since. The photos are still up so some people may be looking at them, but I am no longer interacting with the site. All the accounts are linked to my Hotmail account, which with new work and RMIT accounts I now rarely check. It’s amazing really the short-term value of so many subject specific social networking sites on the internet.

NOW
Since returning home though I have discovered that broad social book marking sites are much more useful for the long-term. Delicious will continue to grow with my interests and now that I am home and using the internet regularly the site has helped me to categorise sites as per their use. Delicious has also helped me find an array of interesting blogs via their tags so it feels like the internet world is much easier to navigate. Fellow group member nuggen also writes of the benefits of Digg which manages to tag particular passages- it’s incredible really.
However, the marketing potential of social bookmarking is probably the real reason for the success of sites like Digg and Delicious.
According to Internet Marketing Melbourne utilising social bookmarking sites is the cheapest marketing tool around (accessed 2010).
Ben Zimmer from the New York Times (March 2010) has also written an interesting article on the meaning of being social today, how the word as a verb has changed the internet and social bookmarking’s ability to popularise a web site. View here.

And so I have realised that the little blogs I thought I had stumbled upon were actually being raised above all others by authors utilising a range of social bookmarking tools available to them. How much information am I missing out on simply because their authors are not into social bookmarking? Would anyone be reading half the number of blogs they do without them? And maybe I should go back over my Delicious tags and rename them more effectively. Surely management would be a more useful tag than mgmt?

Oh, and not to be left behind I also have to figure out how to add the Delicious link to this blog. Web 2.0 maintenance never ends!