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Is Web 2.0 Affecting Real-life Yet?
As the year draws to a close, and one of the first chapters of Web 2.0 prints it’s last word of 2006, I begin to ponder on the movement’s effect on life off-line. More specifically, is Web 2.0 shrinking the gap between on-line and off-line worlds, more than ever before?
Have you met someone on MySpace and then seen them in the flesh? Do you use Google Calendar for appointments and events in the real world and not just virtual tasks (exclusively personal-use, I mean)? How much of your life is dictated, organised and tracked on-line right this very moment?
I personally have not used Web 2.0 to enhance my real-life at all, or at most minimally and indirectly. Thinking about this surprises me, as the whole talk of ‘blurring the gap’ and the tools that are there, makes me think that much of the ‘new web’ is geared and / or usable for bricks and mortar living. Look at the amount of task-lists there are, the amount of services to document the outside world (video sites and blogging, for example), and you can instantly see at least the potential for real-world connections. But, personally, I realise that I may not use these services for much more than keeping my on-line experience running as smoothly, or as enjoyably as possible.
Looking at Technorati’s ‘Top Tags’ which is featured on the homepage, we can see at a swift glance that many of these are in relation to real-world events, people and objects. Maybe I’m not as connected as I should be? Oh, the horror!
I guess these tags have to be taken subjectively. Are more ‘less-techie’ individuals beginning to use technorati, thus the technology-focused tags will decrease in popularity? I am not partial to technorati’s main demographic of users, but I have a feeling that more ‘normal’ folk are starting to pick up on Web 2.0. Many would say this is obvious – just look at YouTube or MySpace – but I expect many users of these services wouldn’t know Web 2.0 from a mutt’s private parts.
Of course, this cloud of tags could also be swayed by ‘techies’ also being interested in general events around the world. But this brings me back to the origin of this post – the real world is, day by day, becoming more integrated into on-line services, activities and sites, which in my opinion is a fantastic move for the web itself.
The benefits of more real-world integration are obvious. More topics that the majority can relate to, means more interest in the web and specialised services in the Web 2.0 arena. Which in turn means more eyeballs, more business opportunities, and a higher-level of globalisation and connectivity. Oh, and the dishwasher will also eventually put the dishes away once cleaning is complete. Bosch DishWashr BETA complete with glassy-gradients.
In summary, I would love to hear how close, or far apart, your on-line and off-line lives are becoming. Are they becoming more integrated and intertwined?
Matt Harwood is from England and works as an interactive marketing consultant.
Well, I can’t give you an honest reply on that because online really *is* my offline life. I spend an overwhelming majority of my not-sleeping-time online.
I would like to point out, however, that technorati isn’t the best example for the type of thing you’re questioning. By looking at that tag cloud I would guess that technorati itself is achieving it’s goal of bridging real world and online; they have writers writing about real things on blogs. They’ve reached their target market (writers). Not all blogs are about tech and web 2.0. In fact, in my quest to find as many as possible, I only found about 10 – 15.
The second thing I’d like to address is that web 2.0 is not a trend… it’s not a pixel-font site design or “grunge” web site design. It’s not about design at all. It’s about usability, which trickles down into design. There is a wide range of design styles in “web 2.0″ that are all usable. So the question isn’t really “is web 2.0 affecting your life?”, it’s more along the lines of “is the new direction of the internet affecting your real life?”
To that, I would say of course. I’m on it right now communicating with you. It just happens the things I care the most about (outside of friends and family) are online.
All in all, ‘web 2.0′ isn’t going to bring anything to peoples real lives that the dot com bubble didn’t. It doesn’t matter how good you make a website, you’ll never achieve the goal of being fully integrated into someones lives until you modify the way in which we all interact with the internet.
For example, when I sit down at my computer, I know I’m going to be onlnie, looking for cool stuff or just communicating. In order to bring it into my offline life, I have to make a special trip to the computer, or pull out a gadget. I may run to my computer to print out google maps or mapquest directions before I head to a store I’ve never been to; I may log into my work computer and check my calendar before leaving for the day because I may have to work that evening.
Until we integrate it into our lives more, the internet won’t drastically alter how we live.
Although I must say, looking at a menu and ordering a pizza online and having it show up at my door 30 minutes later is pretty damn cool. :)
This is an interesting post for me, because I just made the shift from corporate life to start up life, and the new one is much easier and better.
Old world – Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint:
Outlook/ corporate email
Outlook Calendar/ blackberry/ laptop
- result: synchronisation is great but everything is so slow. Hourglass just to open an email. Also files are limited to intranet. Personal and corporate stuff are totally separate.
New world – Google and 37 Signals:
- gmail for company mail and personal email, both read within the same inbox, and managed by labels.
- Google Calendar/ blackberry/ laptop
- Basecamp for myself, and the startup – all sync’d by rss
- Gcalsync to pull Google Calendar into Blackberry
- full access to files over internet using passwords, and software tokens.
- result: I can see everything, and talk to everyone on either laptop or blackberry, without limitation. No intranet issues.
New world much better!
To a certain degree The Facebook has affected my daily life as it is used to organize my friends and I and enhances our communication.
Other than that, I still have my Cingular 8125 connected to my corporate Microsoft Exchange Server. We still use all of the pay-for softare (Microsoft).
My start-up uses existing online tools like basecamp, Google Groups, to enhance our communication.
So, for me, not much of a change, but still a slight impact.
I’m glad you both enjoyed the article!
I think you both raise a good point, possibly indirectly, that ‘corporate entities’ are engraved in the same old way (Outlook / Exchange, for example). I wonder how long this will be the case?
Once again, many thanks!
Matt