Clogging up the Web

Some people think blogs are just plain stupid. They think they are vehicles of vanity or simply inane brain dumps. To paraphrase my own personal blog, they just clog up the Internet.

Well, there are of course many examples of bad blogs out there; the ones that don’t follow the “rules”. For example, I could write about how shocked I am that Real Madrid have just been beaten 6-1 in the first leg of the Spanish Cup semi-final. But who cares? Most people could not give a hoot, but some Zaragoza fans or Real Madrid fans might. And they should be the only people that find that post on my blog. We might even get into a discussion about the decline of Real Madrid, etc. The point is, one person’s inanity is another’s sanity.

So, what has that got to do with “Web 2.0″? Web 2.0 will mean different things to different people. For me, Web 2.0 is all about the user experience (not so much the technology underpinning that, as some people seem to be hyping). It is like going for a meal and instead of just eating and running (Web 1.0), you savour new flavours, trying new dishes or wines, and have an intelligent conversation with your friend. Web 2.0 is about the interaction between communities and their members, businesses and their customers. It is about the sharing of knowledge and experiences over the Internet. Web 2.0 makes it easier to discover things on the Internet, to feel enriched by the experience. Tools / technologies such as blog engines, wikis, AJAX, XHTML and RSS make that more possible. And new ways of finding information, thanks to blog search engines like Technorati, will take away some of the frustration Internet users have felt with the “search all” approach of Google and Yahoo.

To illustrate my point, I recently posted my experience with installing Linux on a new motherboard I had just bought. I went into quite a lot of detail, hoping it might be of some use to someone. I knew it would of no use to 99.9% of people out there, but I knew that someone somewhere would benefit from my experience. Sure enough, a few days later a comment was posted by someone called Cody. Thankfully Cody discovered the problems before buying the motherboard.

Not so lucky was Christopher. He too had the same problems installing Linux on the motherboard. Had he done his research in advance of buying the board, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble (and money). How do I know about his woes? He linked to my post (see here). And Technorati was able to tell me that he had. Many others will find my post as a result and a lot of people will save themselves time and money.

That is the main thrust for me of Web 2.0. Others may only see it as a sub-set of what Web 2.0 is all about, but what can be more important that the sharing of knowledge?

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0