The Social Web

The web has changed just about every aspect of our lives but I'd propose that the explosion of the social web may be the most significant since email. Yeah it sounds nice to throw out big statements like that and maybe I'm wrong, but in my opinion the whole power play of the web changed.

By no means meant as a complete view of web history by any means, but as a place to make a point, look at the power shifts: The first power position of the web belonged to AOL, why? it offered connectivity, content and a revenue model. It moved from AOL to the Browsers which then was transformed to the Portal. Browsers became portals, heck everyone tried to be a portal. Yahoo and MSN, AOL are the last of that breed. Next power position went to Google. Yeah, that little simple tool that was kinda just an accepted web component became and still is the dominant player today.

But then a powerful transformation took place. The combination of low cost storage, broad net access and a philosophic transformation: that users would create and share content - happened. Now the user became important and who you were and who your friends were mattered. What you created had a new value. Maybe more importantly you were willing to create for the fame more than the fortune even if that fame was relatively small. New web services grew to take advantage of this content and make it easy to show, share and comment - and the social web was born.

What does this mean? It means that our web consciousness is now growing significantly faster than Moore's Law. Maybe we need a new law, the growth of an individuals web consciousness doubles every 15 days?

Any way you look at it the cats out of the bag, everything needs to be thought of in the context of the social web now. Get used to it. Better yet get in the game before it passes you by......