MediaPost Publications - Web 3.0: This Time It's Personal - Eighteen-year-old New Yorker Sophie is not trying to catch up to the accelerating pace of Web change. The Web is trying to catch up to her.
Once the school day ends, she says, the line blurs between online and offline. She does her homework with the chat client open. "Wikipedia is probably my best friend right now," she says, adding that Wi-Fi means she's always connected. She dips in and out of fashion blogs, big media like InStyle.com, and forums. MySpace profiles, with their mediocre design and look-at-me explicitness hold little appeal. "There is something very contrived about it," she says.
As a beta tester for CondeNet's new Flip.com, Sophie found something closer to the blend she was looking for - high media production values applied to user-generated content and woven into social networking. She chose the "sponsor" for her profile page (Vera Wang) and she used Web tools to make public scrapbooks ("Flipbooks") that look more like glossy magazines. Members flip through each other's self-expressive books, offer encouragement, swipe ideas, and generate new trends in days (just like the magazine world). In fact, Flipbooks are where big media mash it up with user-generated impulses, as girls blend their own videos and music with bins of CondeNet material. Sponsors like Nordstrom's and Nike don't advertise per se, but get into Sophie and her friends' mixes by providing media assets they can paste into their books. For Sophie, it is more basic. "It's a network of girls embracing their individuality and supporting each other's desire to distinguish themselves." This is the prehistoric edge of the Web's next generation, already dubbed "Web 3.0," where big media and marketing assets blend seamlessly with people's desire for both self-expression and forging connections.
"What will distinguish Web 3.0 is the professionalization of 2.0," says Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State's Center for Media Design. Users' tools for creating their own content are accelerating even as big media places more of its prized TV shows, music videos, and news stories online.
The line between professional and amateur content will blur, but more importantly, media properties and personal lives will mingle in new ways.
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Once the school day ends, she says, the line blurs between online and offline. She does her homework with the chat client open. "Wikipedia is probably my best friend right now," she says, adding that Wi-Fi means she's always connected. She dips in and out of fashion blogs, big media like InStyle.com, and forums. MySpace profiles, with their mediocre design and look-at-me explicitness hold little appeal. "There is something very contrived about it," she says.
As a beta tester for CondeNet's new Flip.com, Sophie found something closer to the blend she was looking for - high media production values applied to user-generated content and woven into social networking. She chose the "sponsor" for her profile page (Vera Wang) and she used Web tools to make public scrapbooks ("Flipbooks") that look more like glossy magazines. Members flip through each other's self-expressive books, offer encouragement, swipe ideas, and generate new trends in days (just like the magazine world). In fact, Flipbooks are where big media mash it up with user-generated impulses, as girls blend their own videos and music with bins of CondeNet material. Sponsors like Nordstrom's and Nike don't advertise per se, but get into Sophie and her friends' mixes by providing media assets they can paste into their books. For Sophie, it is more basic. "It's a network of girls embracing their individuality and supporting each other's desire to distinguish themselves." This is the prehistoric edge of the Web's next generation, already dubbed "Web 3.0," where big media and marketing assets blend seamlessly with people's desire for both self-expression and forging connections.
"What will distinguish Web 3.0 is the professionalization of 2.0," says Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State's Center for Media Design. Users' tools for creating their own content are accelerating even as big media places more of its prized TV shows, music videos, and news stories online.
The line between professional and amateur content will blur, but more importantly, media properties and personal lives will mingle in new ways.
...