SCHWARTZ CROSSROADS

Judgement Day: When Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

Tabblo founder and former client Antonio Rodriguez recently pointed out on his blog that mainstream America still isn't using many of the Web 2.0 tools out there. He's right. Stand on any soccer field and watch the parents snapping away on their digital cameras, then ask them if they planned to share those with the team via Flickr or if they were going to put them on a Facebook site, and you'll get a lot of blank stares. Most just email a few shots to relatives, or use a legacy service like Shutterfly.

Recently I spoke with the founder of TownConnect.com--social networking technology for families, schools, teams, etc. He told me that he isn't bothering with Flickr integration since most of his targeted audience--suburbanites living in communities like mine--don't use it.

Mainstream America will get there and start using some of these tools. It's happening slowly, but it's probably going to change how we measure all this. Today links in and out of a site drive search and Technorati rankings. But that kind of measurement relies on an active community of users who participate as much as they read. As the mainstream takes over, people will probably read more than they participate.

Sure, we all have statistics and numbers about how many unique visitors are coming to a site, but those are neither audited nor shared. That leaves us with sampling sites like Compete and Alexa, but those have their own issues in that they don't get large enough samples from smaller blogs. So without reliable numbers, how will we know what's popular?

That's why I love our CAIT concept, which tells us that by looking beyond the Technorati 100 or Techmeme Leaderborard, we can still have a simple way to evaluate whether a blog is worth our time. Because as this area continues to grow, figuring out who is reading and listening to what is going to become increasingly difficult.

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on November 9, 2007 at 10:13 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)