The Web is not just about information.
Web 2.0 is linking people…
…people sharing, trading and collaborating…
First of all, here is a short video about how we are using Web 2.0 or how it is using us:
These days there are many communities: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Youtube, Digg etc. (Social Networks here are in the broader sense, including Social Bookmarking and video sites.)
Youtube offers possibility to upload short videos so its community can see each other. They are dancing, singing, acting, crying or laughing, some of them just having fun and the others talking about serious things in front of the camera. Then they can upload that short video and wait for the comments, responds and other feedback from the Youtube community which is really big.
Good examples of how quickly ideas are spreading on Youtube are „free hugs“ or „Numa Numa“. The second day I was in Utrecht I saw some people standing in one of the main streets in the city center with a small board and giving „free hugs“. And if you type the second magic keyword „numa numa“ into the search box, you will see something like this:
Almost 10 000 out of 200 000 videos on Youtube are addressed to the Youtube community. Why do people need talk to someone they do not know and even cannot see? Actually sometimes people are more open with thousands of people they may not know than with their friends. The reason could be the loss of community. People feel disconnected in those huge cities and only roadways, TVs and internet connect them. But at the same time TVs and internet isolate. That is why community is in decline and new forms of networks communities are emerging.
We are moving from place-to-place to person-to-person connectivity. This phenomenon is called “networked individualism” (Barry Wellman). Our values are still the same (community, relationships, authenticity) but the world around us is changing – we are becoming more individualistic, independent, almost everything is getting commercialized. That is so called cultural inversion.
Cultural inversion:
EXPRESS: ↔ VALUE:
individualism ↔ community
independence ↔ relationships
commercialization ↔ authenticity
Youtube comes into the middle of all of this. It offers connection without constraints. That is why we are living in the age of Youtube now.
It will take about an hour for you to watch this video but it‘s worth to see this dynamic and funny presentation about what is going on on Youtube:
