Well, well, well. If yesterday I was actually commenting on a really interesting and enlightening presentation on Web 2.0 by Andy Budd, here I am today coming up with a topic that relates to something quite the opposite. Yes, indeed, if yesterday I was mentioning how quite a lot of folks out there seem to be very familiar with the topic of Web 2.0 or social software here you have got a weblog post that John Cook, over at John Cook’s Venture Blog, shared a couple of weeks back where he gets to detail that we may be still far off in the massive adoption of Social Networking by ordinary people (Aren’t we all ordinary, by the way?). Check out Heard on the Street: What is Web 2.0?
In that particular weblog entry he actually gets to detail some of the interesting and relevant quotes he has managed to gather from interviewing ordinary people on the streets by asking them to define something so popular?!? as Web 2.0 / Social Networking. Or so we thought, because the results, and quotes, from some of those interviews are actually quite revealing. It looks like we still have got a whole lot more to do in order to keep spreading the message about social software and how people can benefit from it. Here you have got a couple of examples so that you can see for yourself what some people are saying about that "idealized version of the Web":
"Web 2.0? Web 2.0? I have heard that before. I think I have heard that somewhere. I think it costs money. I am not interested if it costs."
"As far as I understand, it is for hospitals and universities. It is not for the public use."
Oh dear, it looks like we do have a lot of work to do still, in that promotion and evangelism of social software, although it looks like some folks may already be having a better grasp of what it actually means, after all, like this one:
"The next generation of Web technologies, whatever that means. I think it is more interactive."
Not bad, eh? Well, I just wanted to share this particular weblog post with you folks to show that some times we all may get too immersed into the whole thing of the hype around Web 2.0, but we still need to think that there is a whole world out there who also needs to understand and grasp some of the main concepts around social software. So if you are getting tired of hearing over and over and over again about it, think back about how many more millions of people out there don’t have a clue as to what social networking is all about. Let’s help them understand and move forward!
We would be much better off that way, I am sure.
Tags: Web 2.0, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, John Cook
