Web 2.0 as an isolated phenomena is done. The wider web is absorbing the concepts of community publishing and and social media, and the label is loosing its definition. New social networks are no longer Web 2.0. They’re just social networks. And I’m no longer German American. Things melt.
Consider MySpace. I’m not sure whether it was at the front of the Web 2.0 slide, or it just got drug with (under) it. But the only Web 2.0 traits left behind are some really nice content sharing widgets.
I’m noticing that more and more lately. The pick-em-up and take-em-with-you plug-in services are what have made community publishing / social media significant.
- YouTube. Upload your video. Plug it in to your site, your blog, your profiles, whatever.
- Flickr. Upload your pics. Plug it in to your site, your blog, your profiles, whatever.
- Del.icio.us. Bookmark sites. Plug it in to your site, your blog, your profiles, whatever.
Web 2.0 brought great content management tools. But it’s the sharing mechanisms — the widgets and plug-ins — that made them catch on.
I’m a member of about 30 social networks. I use 5. But as each of these networks breaks down the walls and lets me plug-in my take-it-with-me content, I’ll be able to actively participate with all of them. So will you (regardless of how geek you are.)
OpenID can handle identity. YouTube can handle video. Flickr, photos. Del.icio.us, bookmarks (I actually use ma.gnolia.) And, wait for it… Twitter can handle blurts (personal updates.) All that’s left is to decide where to plug them in.
I’m not sure that I should bury an “I like Twitter now” confession inside a longer post, but it’s already done. The reason I didn’t get it before was because the audience was so limited. But tweets have an RSS feed. And I can plug that into anything that lets me. My site, my blog, my profiles, whatever.
It’s the services that allow users to take their content with them (to plug it in wherever they want) that are going to continue to stand out. Twitter just might be one of them.
And when the next bubble bursts, sending everyone back to the chalk, all they’ll need to figure out is how to monetize it. And that is what Web 3.0 should be about. Semantic efforts can be Web 2.1.
2 Responses to “Welcome to the OEM Web”
I see a larger and very interesting trend around decentralized publishing and decentralized reading.
While I can plug my Flickr photos into another weblog/site/publication, my Flickr photos have their own page and RSS. So, there’s a bunch of places they can be viewed. I’m experimenting with publishing my regular blog posts to Twitter in addition to my blog – if you’d rather read them via IM or SMS verses the browser.
Platform-agnostic, for both the writer and reader.
I’m with you. Community publishing was one step of the process. True content portability is the next – right now it only exists for the geeks. Your Twitter experiment is interesting – I’ll check it out.