![\"Social](\"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/social_cloud.jpg\")
Social Cloud<\/span><\/p>\nSocial net\u00adwork\u00ading<\/b> is the idea that people can meet and talk and organ\u00adise their social lives using the Web instead of, or in addi\u00adtion to, more tra\u00addi\u00adtion\u00adal meth\u00adods such as talk\u00ading face to face, or on the phone. It\u2019s an exten\u00adsion of usen\u00adet and bul\u00adlet\u00adin boards that\u2019s based on the web, with more fea\u00adtures. Social net\u00adwork\u00ading sites tend to go through phases; every\u00adone was into Orkut for a while, now it\u2019s MySpace and Face\u00adbook, or Ravelry if you\u2019re a knit\u00adter. Fea\u00adtures and focus vary, but the idea of cre\u00adat\u00ading an online com\u00admunity remains the same.<\/p>\n
User-gen\u00ader\u00adated con\u00adtent<\/b> is the idea that non-pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adals can con\u00adtrib\u00adute con\u00adtent. I don\u2019t like the term much, so I\u2019m going to use the vari\u00adant user-cre\u00adated con\u00adtent<\/em> to show that it\u2019s a cre\u00adat\u00adive pro\u00adcess, not just some machine gen\u00ader\u00adat\u00ading con\u00adtent. The concept of user-cre\u00adated con\u00adtent isn\u2019t new; the Web was first designed as a col\u00adlab\u00ador\u00ada\u00adtion plat\u00adform, the read\/write web. In prac\u00adtic\u00adal terms, how\u00adever, it was dif\u00adfi\u00adcult for those without lots of tech\u00adnic\u00adal know\u00adledge to pub\u00adlish on the web. All these things like blog\u00adging and com\u00adment\u00ading that are now rel\u00adat\u00adively easy for people to do wer\u00aden\u2019t, just a few years ago. Pre\u00advi\u00adously only a few people could make their opin\u00adions widely known, in prac\u00adtice pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adals with access. Don\u2019t for\u00adget that one of the reas\u00adons Ben\u00adjamin Frank\u00adlin could make such a dif\u00adfer\u00adence in the early years of the US<\/span> was that he owned a print\u00ading press!<\/p>\n Now basic\u00adally every\u00adone with access to the inter\u00adnet who\u2019s inter\u00adested can pub\u00adlish their opin\u00adions, their pho\u00adtos, or their videos to their friends and the world. It\u2019s easi\u00ader to keep in touch with friends far away, or find out what life\u2019s like in some far-off place, or con\u00adtrib\u00adute a snip\u00adpet of know\u00adledge to Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia. Some of these pub\u00adlish\u00aders (blog\u00adgers, com\u00admenters, photo-upload\u00aders) have a large audi\u00adence, many have an audi\u00adence that is large enough for them (which may mean just the fam\u00adily, or just them\u00adselves, or a few hun\u00addred strangers).<\/p>\n One of the down\u00adsides of this \u201cdemo\u00adcrat\u00adiz\u00ada\u00adtion\u201d, as it\u2019s some\u00adtimes called, is that it can be hard to find the really good inform\u00ada\u00adtion or enter\u00adtain\u00adment \u2014 you hear a lot about \u201ccult of the ama\u00adteur\u201d and \u201c90% of everything is crap\u201d. Some of this is com\u00ading from those who are threatened by the avail\u00adab\u00adil\u00adity of inform\u00ada\u00adtion from oth\u00ader sources: journ\u00adal\u00adists and news\u00adpa\u00adpers in par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar are right to be scared, since they\u2019re now going to have to work harder to con\u00advince the world that they add value. Wheth\u00ader the enter\u00adtain\u00adment cre\u00adated by ama\u00adteurs that\u2019s avail\u00adable on the web is bet\u00adter than that cre\u00adated by the mass enter\u00adtain\u00adment industry depends on your view of how good a job the lat\u00adter does at find\u00ading and nur\u00adtur\u00ading talent.<\/p>\n The long tail<\/a> is anoth\u00ader aspect of Web 2.0 that you hear about a lot. Book\u00adsellers are a good example of how the long tail works: Where\u00adas your aver\u00adage book\u00adseller, even Water\u00adstones<\/a> or Black\u00adwell\u2019s<\/a>, has maybe a few thou\u00adsand or a few tens of thou\u00adsands of books, an inter\u00adnet seller can have mil\u00adlions. Although the com\u00adpar\u00adis\u00adon is per\u00adhaps not fair, since an inter\u00adnet book\u00adseller, just like your loc\u00adal book\u00adseller, can order from the pub\u00adlish\u00ader and will usu\u00adally count that as being part of the invent\u00adory for brag\u00adging reas\u00adons. And, of course, you can always go to Pow\u00adell\u2019s Books<\/a> in Port\u00adland, which claims to have over a mil\u00adlion books phys\u00adic\u00adally in their store. It\u2019s big; they hand out maps at the entrance so you don\u2019t get lost.<\/p>\n The long-tail aspect is this: It turns out that most of the rev\u00aden\u00adue does\u00adn\u2019t come from selling the Harry Pot\u00adter books, big sellers though those are, it\u2019s from selling those books that aren\u2019t indi\u00advidu\u00adally big sellers. The total volume of sales in those niche areas is lar\u00adger than the best-sellers. Oth\u00ader com\u00adpan\u00adies that make good use of this of course are eBay<\/a>, where you can buy things that you can\u00ad\u2019t get down\u00adtown, uptown, or poten\u00adtially any\u00adwhere in your town, and the video rent\u00adal com\u00adpany Net\u00adflix<\/a>, which rents out some 35,000 titles in the one mil\u00adlion videos it sends out each day.<\/p>\n And, of course, the long tail applies to blogs and oth\u00ader online sites. In oth\u00ader words, no mat\u00adter how spe\u00adcial\u00adised your blog is, someone out there in blog-read\u00ading land is likely to find it inter\u00adest\u00ading. The big prob\u00adlem is how those poten\u00adtial read\u00aders find out about it.<\/p>\n One of a series on Web 2.0, taken from my talk at the CSW<\/span> Sum\u00admer School in July 2007. Here<\/a>\u2019s the series intro\u00adduc\u00adtion. Com\u00ading up next: tech\u00adnic\u00adal aspects of Web 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The social and col\u00adlab\u00ador\u00ada\u00adtion part of Web 2.0 mostly revolves around the con\u00adcepts of social net\u00adwork\u00ading, user-gen\u00ader\u00ad\u00adated con\u00adtent, and the long tail. Social Cloud Social net\u00adwork\u00ading is the idea that people can meet and talk and organ\u00adise their social lives using the Web instead of, or in addi\u00adtion to, more tra\u00addi\u00adtion\u00adal meth\u00adods such as talk\u00ading face \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cWeb 2.0: Social and Collaboration\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentations","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}