I like being the tech/sales guy – no worries about that

Very interesting reflections, particularly the perspective on how in Web 2.0 users and site owners could be linked together in a fairly Faustian bargain to grow usage at the expense of the quality of their connections. There’s definitely something in that explains some of the issues in making money out of sites that we (users and site owners) have created. One to mull on …

Thanks for the comment and hope all goes well in Brighton.

Ivan

This is a theme that’s been intriguing me recently too – especially the link between communication and commodification. Are we encouraged to “use” our “friends”/contacts just so that a social networking site may profit? For example, do I want my circle of friends, and the communication within it, to be dictated by Facebook apps?

The problem with web 2.0, as I see it, is that the money comes from 2 things:

Firstly, “capturing” those social things we do anyway, such as sharing photos, or just idle chatting (see SMS, IM, Twitter, etc). This is good, but suffers from two problems – 1) anyone can do it, so it’s difficult to make cash from it, and 2) it’s difficult to “grow”, because people are generally quite happy with how much they communicate with their friends, thanks.

The second problem leads on from this, and comes out of the two problems above. A capitalist view on commodifying communications then leads to: 1) “novel” ways of, or activities for, communicating. This is the “USP” side of business. 2) a lust for just more communication generally. The end result is that we end up with more *quantity* of communication, but less *quality*. So I totally agree with your idea that the new model of communications is based on spamming your friends. Yay.

Maybe making money in web2.0 is difficult because, actually, we don’t *need* to communicate with each other in greater quantities. Maybe we have enough communication. Certainly, the increase in communication needed to sustain companies trying to make cash off it is well above the increase we’re actually seeing. (Novelty creates interest, which creates page impressions, but ultimately novelty is an unsustainable business model.)

Seeing the communications that we desire, but currently lack, is very difficult. Finding a solution is often pot-luck, it seems to me.

- Scribe

p.s. Sorry for any offense caused by calling you the “tech/sales guy” too – banging out blog posts too quickly brings out all the over-generalisations in me