Talking about articles and in this case more current than the one from the Economist.
I found this article at the ABC News site writen by Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author. He just published a book called ”The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture,”. The book outlines the dangers of citizen media (Social media), Web 2.0.
Andrew Keen offers his opinions on the Internet, American culture and the way he see it the world.
Read it over and tell me what you think, my opinion will follow shortly, want to try to get the book first. But my first impression is it might be a little to pessimistic.
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Kristjan Mar Hauksson is the founder and director of search and online communications at Nordic eMarketing. The company specializes in multilingual online communications, organic search engine optimization, and marketing through several verticals such as tourism, finance, government, and pharmaceuticals. It helps companies gain international visibility online and to use the Internet as a communication channel; it also provides consultation in web content management systems and analytics solutions. Hauksson is on the board of directors of SEMPO, on the Advisory board for Bing Advertising and founded the Iceland SEO/SEM forum. He has been involved in developing Internet solutions since 1996, and involved in search engine optimization and marketing since 1997. He is a publish author on the topic of Internet Marketing and among other co-authored the acclaimed Global Search Engine Marketing.
Whatever people may feel about social media the fact is social media will be the next wave on the internet. If web was build on hyperlinks, the next wave will be build on communities.
Yes you might be right there but my feeling is that we might be over hyping it? Having said that I do agree with you, as it is now more “user/people” input is what will be (is already) the next thing.
I do have a huge feeling that it feels like a bubble. Especially when I am reading Mashable! and seeing all of the huge investments being made into companies with little if no profit margins.
However, the big difference is between the dot com bubble and the social net is people. And people have money in their pocket. People are also smarter consumers and use many peer advice articles like they once used side by side comparison.
I think there is a future for Web 2.0, but one that needs to be scrutinized by the numbers that it will ultimately post each quarter.
Jerard thanks for your post I must say agree and at least it is going to be fun watching the development of social media in the near future and in my case I am going to have a close eye on the evolution of social search. Having said that and just because I have the opportunity I am going to plug – I will be a facilitator at the internet marketing conference and expo Ad-tech London next month, drop by if you have a chance :-)