Web 2.0 Concepts and Trends, continued
For instance, in
2007 TechNewsWorld published the top 10 biggest news stories that can
be credited to bloggers. In this list they credit blogs for keeping the
story of the December 2006 firing of United States prosecutors in the
news. They also noted how bloggers pounced on a YouTube video of former
Virginia Senator George Allen using an ethnic slur at a campaign rally;
the story instantly became national news and was ultimately a significant
factor in Senator Allen’s defeat that November. And in one of the
biggest blog stories so far, “Memogate,” bloggers researched
and exposed the authenticity of documents upon which Dan Rather based
a “CBS Evening News” report during the 2004 presidential election
about George W. Bush’s Texas Air National
Guard service.
The Asia Times notes that while communications systems failed to provide warning of or timely information about the 2004 Southeast Asian earthquake and tsunami, bloggers were pivotal in providing a constant flow of stories and pictures, information about resources and aid, and help to people searching for their loved ones. The mainstream media, to a great degree, relied on content that originated with the blogs. In a ZDNet column Richard McManus notes that in both the Southeast Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, blogs and wikis were sources of up-to-date information, a way to organize aid efforts and ways for people to respond emotionally to the disasters.
In these and countless other examples we see how the Internet in general—and Web 2.0 tools in particular—are becoming a normal, even expected, part of how people manage information and enrich their social lives. The data bear this out. By 2007 MySpace, one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, had more than 100 million members; Facebook claimed more than 50 million. And contrary to initial assumptions, these socially networked masses are not all kids. More than half of MySpace members are 35 or older. So, too, with Facebook, LinkedIn and other popular networks.
According to USC’s
Annenberg School for Communication annual survey for 2007 and the 2007
report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project:
• 78
percent of Americans older than age 12 regularly use the Internet
• Two-thirds of Web users access the Internet from home, and nearly
half of those Internet home users have broadband connections
• The average home user spends at least 14 hours online each week
• Nearly half (47 percent) of Internet users say they feel empowered
by the Internet
• Two-thirds of people who participate in online communities say
that these communities are very or extremely important to them
• The average Web user is 45 years old (the same as the average
New York Times reader)
• And 37 percent of Internet users have participated in some form
of user-generated content
As Internet access, mobile technology and particularly a networked, social, interactive way of accessing information are becoming more and more common, people’s expectations of the groups, networks and organizations with which they associate are also changing. Increasingly people expect a conversation in which they contribute as well as consume information.
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