Gimme 2.0 to go. And upsize it

Roger Hislop

The whole Web 2.0 user-generated-content thing always left me cold. The reason I don’t go to am-dram theatre performances is not because I prefer to give cashiers at the Baxter fistfuls of cash, but because amateur theatrical productions suck. They are enjoyed only by cast members' admirers and their long-suffering families (I use the word “enjoy” loosely). And now I watch in delight as the Web 2.0 and “user generated content” thing dies a miserable, wracked death. Nothing gives me more pleasure than the cracked glaze spreading across Facebook’s plastichrome-plating – visitor numbers are starting to hiccup, its users are revolting. Both comScore and Nielsen show dips in the last few months: both logins and the most important metric – time spent on the site – dropped off towards the end of last year. Various commentators say it's explainable, or spurious, but more than likely it’s a smoking gun. At least, I'd like to think so.

Is it in decline? Just based on my circle of acquaintances, people are getting bored of it. Of all the big name Web 2.0 sites. You spend some time on MySpace, or Facebook, or Virb, or Orkut, or Imeem. You play around with it, you dig it, you get bored with it, you move on. And every one of the Web 2.0 sites that explodes in popularity, sucks in the hordes of punters, and then implodes is just that little bit less novel than the one before, because the limits of the Web technology and the interfaces we have available are rapidly being reached. Reach the world? Check. User-definable interface? Check. Widgets and so-called “applications”? Check. User community? Check. Novelty featurettes? Check. Web 2.0 is becoming a thousand permutations on a thousand different flavours of the same reality-avoidance dreck.

All these sites really offer is novelty, distraction and superficial pseudo-entertainment, with the addicting crack-high of thinking that you’re making new friends and becoming more popular, until you realise that the reason you haven’t talked to those “old friends” in five years was because you didn’t actually like them that much, and that you never actually wanted to ever hear from that weird kid you left behind in junior school all those decades ago. And all your new Facebook "friends" are a bunch of arbitrary, time-wasting goldfish that you could easily replace with a well-coded bot (btw I claim dibs on a patent on this -- an automated Facebook friend that posts random feelgood messages to your wall, randomly pokes you every few weeks, and randomly invites you to become a vampire/zombie/crotch-itch every few days).

Except the user generated content business (I call it the lusersphere) is not dying. It’s growing. User generated content sites are going to become the junk food restaurants of the digital economy. No one wants McDonalds, no one needs McDonalds, few even really like MacDonalds, but still they go back, again and again. User generated content is mostly feeble and devoid of intellectual or artistic ingredient. But it's cheap (free), it passes time, it makes you feel temporarily sated after a binge. 

So, like McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts, Web 2.0 companies will make shedloads of cash, will grow and sprawl, and will give us the entertainment and intellectual equivalent of Happy Meals™. And those who understand what it is will reject it utterly.

And blog about it.
 
PS Digg, the vacuous feedback system for amplifying crass novelty and tawdry smut to the airless heights of Internet fame, is apparently eyeing its fading fortunes, pulling on the rented tux and looking for a buyer. Digg hotly denies this. But if you were Jay Adelson, wouldn't you do exactly the same thing?

• 2008/03/11
• permalink
• comments (0)
• trackbacks (0)

  Bookmark this on ... BlinkBits BlinkList Blogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us Digg it FeedMarker feedmelinks Furl Give a Link Gravee igooi Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Onlywire RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Spurl tagtooga TalkDigger Wink Yahoo MyWeb