Web 2.0 and You

One of my favorite sites to browse is LostRemote.com. Their tagline is “Where TV finds the future,” so naturally the topic of Web 2.0 comes up every once and a while.  To kick off this post, I refer to two LostRemote postings:

#1- The humerous- And I quote: “Web 2.0 logos: Just add reflection & BETA tag”

#2- Serious reference for Web 2.0- which links us to: http://www.go2web20.net/

Go2Web2.0 is one of the most comprehensive listing of Web 2.0 sites. 

Before going on, I’m also going to add a very insightful article on the history of Web 2.0 from O’Reilly.

Go2Web2.0 got me thinking…what on this list have I heard of?  What do I use on a regular basis?  What has the potential for me to use it?

The list of sites I use on a regular basis is fairly short from the Go2Web2.0 list:

-Facebook

-YouTube, and

-Blog sites (as a generality, like the one you’re now reading)

 Not a very expansive list, I’ll say, but surely a starting point for our little conversation here.  For the purpose of this, let’s ignore, shall we, some of the privacy and copyright issues several of the above inherently have.  (Even Mark Cuban, blogger extraordinaire, insists the end of YouTube is in the cards.) 

 Let’s instead focus on their viability as vehicles that could some day equally hold the future of mass media just as much as large media firms, to paraphrase Stevens.

 It’s true, SOME media can be produced just as easily by a young girl as a media professional.  It’s also true the phenomenon is gaining recognition and legitimacy.  The White House has bloggers in the press corps.  Just read a linked story on FrontBurner a few weeks ago that, for the first time, bloggers at some fashion thing somewhere were given credentials for the first time ever.  (Though we could surely dive into the legitimacy of covering some runway event in the first place.)

 Here’s what remains to be seen… Will media giants, or mainstream media as a whole, begin to use Web 2.0 technologies?  I think yes.  It’s inevitable and would add great depth and texture to highly-trafficked media sites.  Many have already. 

There are numerous blogs on media sites, look at CNN's iReport, etc. But, will individual media producers gain control or even be on an equal level of “large media firms”? I don’t think so. We all saw the power of individuals ("citizen journalists") doing spot news during the hurricane season of 2005 and even, more recently, the Thai coup. All of this citizen journalist coverage has been used not to replace large media firm coverage, but rather to supplement it. The power of getting the images and videos out to a mass, we're talking very large audience, still lies with large media companies. Sure, people could have published them to their blog or personal site, but the audience would be much smaller.

 That’s not to say that it isn’t becoming easier for Joe Shmoe to have the same (or kinda equal) media production power of a large firm, but Joe’s audience is smaller and there’s a much more skeptical eye to his work.  Many individual producers can have impact on media, however.  Rather/TexANG was all started by some quibbling bloggers. 

 The idea of numerous individual media producers does in fact hold large media firms a lot more accountable for what happens on the airwaves. (Once again, referring back to the Bush example above.)  Even in a more realistic sense, no one, whether it’s on-air nationally or locally, can screw up during a show without it appearing on YouTube the next day.  (Just take Kyra Phillps audio problems or the myriad of other news bloopers that pop up on a daily basis.)

 So, in short, it’s great that anybody can produce content, but it means that everyone needs to have a watchful eye on where information is coming from.  Journalists also must not underestimate the power of Web 2.0, because it’s even easier to hold us accountable for what we do.