Web Democracy 2.0

During this past week, I engaged in multiple meetings focused on a project I authored called “MyJournal.” One particular meeting involved David Frankel and Ed Merritt. What initially began as a regular meeting took an exciting turn, evolving into a brainstorming session. Our collective focus shifted towards devising a strategy for establishing a democratic online network that would facilitate social interaction. This prospect left me feeling quite optimistic.

During this time I received an email with a link to an article by  Paul Graham. This article dealt with the concept of “The Truth about Web 2.0” and the democratic essence of the World Wide Web. In his enthusiastic narrative, Paul eloquently discussed topics such as news and information dissemination. He aptly pointed out:

The most dramatic example of Web 2.0 democracy is not in the selection of ideas, but their production. I’ve noticed for a while that the stuff I read on individual people’s sites is as good as or better than the stuff I read in newspapers and magazines. And now I have independent evidence: the top links on Reddit are generally links to individual people’s sites rather than to magazine articles or news stories.

Paul is right, many individuals, including myself, tend to skim through mainstream news but swiftly transition to authentic perspectives offered by real people through insightful blogs. One of my regular online stops was Threadwatch, (it has since ceased to operate). The reason I favoured this platform was its expertise in picking up the best and most relevant news relevant to my industry of interest. They would then provide their own evaluations while creating engagement with other marketing professionals. It doesn’t get much better than that. Several similar services exist, with Threadwatch being just one example tailored to the search marketing sector.

All in all Paul’s article makes a good enlightening read and starts the mind racing. On the back of this article, I have scheduled another meeting tomorrow to discuss how we can get this to work for our project.

Here are some snippets from Paul’s article:

Web 2.0
Paul Graham

“So I was surprised at a conference this summer when Tim O’Reilly led a session intended to figure out a definition of “Web 2.0.” Didn’t it already mean using the web as a platform? And if it didn’t already mean something, why did we need the phrase at all?”

“I don’t think there was any deliberate plan to suggest there was a new version of the web. They just wanted to make the point that the web mattered again. It was a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming, and the “2.0” referred to whatever those might turn out to be”

“The story about “Web 2.0” meaning the web as a platform didn’t live much past the first conference. By the second conference, what “Web 2.0″ seemed to mean was something about democracy. At least, it did when people wrote about it online. The conference itself didn’t seem very grassroots. It cost $2800, so the only people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies”