Use of Social Networks: fundamentals for B2B marketeers

Absolutely a “must see”!! And think..after!

# follow friday, tweets everywhere and my cat got mad!

I got hooked.

I had a Twitter account since ages (this being quite “relative”, I trust..), buth honestly had no intention to tweet about my..my..my whatever.

Then, realising that being curious is a gift not to waste, I got into it..quite shyly at the beginning, and today a little bit more confident. Won’t be the chap with thousands of followers and able to follow masses of people, but in my critical way, I do use Twitter with a bunch of close friends and get info from a rather small circle of “informants”.

Today, one of these friend put me into this #followfriday frenzy!!!

You may know what that is… Anyone is suggesting @friends allover the place, something very much like the Facebook friend recommendation, I have started to follow the hash and got overwhelmed by an hefty flow of tweets, had to turn the PC speaker off, my cat was going absolutely crazy!!!

Now, this is all very nice, but why on earth I have to follow blindly those @godknowswho? I found on another website some sort of recommendation on who to follow, reason why and the like, and got already some nice insights into events, Web advances, comments on social networks, basically it was a good hint!!

But the rest… Is it something like “size matters”?

Or actually the quality of it all will become a factor? But into the social web, numbers are authority. If I have got a huge number of link/followers/readers/whatever, and leveraging the collective intelligence, and the ability of social systems to auto-calibrate for the best, then I do become de facto interesting. Saying what??

I mean, someone with 60K followers in the magic realm of hornpipes won’t really drive me crazy, nor does that person that is retweeting any little hiccup the World produces. So, back to the “if my friend tells me you are good, then you are good”.

Ultimately, then, size does not matter, whilst the power of reference does become a massive factor. Again.

Is then Twitter a way to scope out your real friends, those that really know you, those who really know your interests, the way you think, what is close to your heart? A bit like choosing a little present in a large Saturday market, that very small thing that would perfectly fit into my friend life!

It would be nice, very nice, unfortunately we still have to cope with hornpipes and the likes!!

UNLESS… SERENDIPITY…

Fine, this is all a bit excessive, it may be the heat here in Milan (it will be 35°C in an hour or so), be “twitter happy” and God bless..

Have a good weekend you all!!

Broadband what???

Very briefly.

Data from the OECD research shows that Italy is 21st in terms of broadband penetration, lagging behind anyone, basically. This is a fundamental driver to innovation, systemic evolution and, for Heaven’ sake, a modern country, despite the fact that there are studies determining the impact of broadband on overall GDP (like 1.21% of GDP growth every 10% point in ICT – broadband in this case  – penetration, according to a World Bank document )

Now, provided that data thrown in the conversation count for “food for thoughts”, but still, this is quite an interesting point to raise when discussing about “how to face the challenge posed by the crisis”..

Couple this with  “credit crunch”, mainly addressed to SMEs in a system made by SMEs (90%?? more???), in which bad credits are generally due to the topmost 1% of large companies (53% if I recall correctly), and if you do go down to the top 10% of companies (in size..), bad credits go up to more than 80%…

So, if you do not allow for investments to be made by the largest and healtier part of the economic system, and do not allow for upgrading the economy with the most relevant weaponry, but rather spend your available money in public (useless) infrastructures such as bridges over troubled waters between Sicily and continental Italy, or do not tight up the public expenditure, how on Earth are you going to keep afloat? By serial miracles?? I have been obvious here, but seemingly “obvious” is not that anymore..

Eventually.. we are in Italy after all..

Apologies for being country-centered..

Always connected.. what about me, myself and I?? No probs, got a Big Mother!!!

There is something fantastic in being able not to feel alone in any situation that life may throws at you..if you have been dumped by your beloved, if you don’t know what the heck is an aspidistra, if your brand new iPad (ahahahah!!!) let you down in the middle of a whatever-fancy-stuff-you-were-doing, if, ififififififif, if.. no matter what, you are or could (could??) be with someone, instantly, and not feeling alone, no more dragging you out from the pit with just your own forces, no more. Thanks to connectivity, broadband, 3G, WiFi, anything you use to link your pc, netbook, smartphone to the World.

Instead of a Big Brother, we do have now a Big Mother… no more finding your way out of trouble,someone did already forge your path out of foggy times…

Since there is an advantage in being so hyperconnected, we kept on adding, and we posted, and we allowed, and we posted again, and uploaded, shared, commented, ranked…

Then, you know what, “Privacy” begun to transform from a “legal” issue to protect to currently something to learn about.. and I could not agree more with this.. I truly understand the plethora of possibility, the incredible array of potential, the stunning power of being connected, but should not we go back in learning how beautiful is to walk around and being almost invisible, how wonderful is to get lost somewhere (as one advert was claiming some times ago..), how relaxing is the thought of the World spinning around nevermind you..

I am not certainly saying we “should go back”, but I am surely saying we “should learn how” to be a new human being into a new society canvass. Are we educated enough to understand that the World is also propelling ahead because of someone took his time to sit down and think, in silence, finding a new, real brand new path out of troubles, whatever they were? Are we really “innovating” or instead transforming the shared thoughts into something? Is this innovation or is a way to serve the most, in the easiest possible way, this being giving them what they want? Isn’t this Consumerism to its fullest extent and nothing to do with Innovation? And, more importantly, are we evolving or we are retrenching into sorting out basic but shared needs and thus Icarus is falling back on Earth again??

Or, more simple and less tragic, are we sure we do always have something intersting to say and worth sharing with the rest of the Planet? Isn’t this arrogance?

Just for the sake of argument, mind you…and I am not twitting this..

iPhone with x-ray vision???

There we are again… I promise (not that you were dying for this..) that I will try and keep this blog space kind of alive from the darkness again!!

So, to start with something interesting, here we are… as you all know, Japan is potentially the most interesting country in terms of mobile usage. I am talking about the actual mobile lifestyle that is alive and kicking in the streets of, say, Tokyo, and the amount of attention the mobile world absorb.

Since the early days of DoCoMo and its venture into the territory of the revenue sharing models, Japan has witnessed a plethora of interesting, useful and appealing services flourishing and landing over the mobile handsets Japanese provide not to have farthest than a meter from their hands… mobile in Japan is not simply technology, but a prosthesis..

Having said all of the above, a company called Tonchidot (team of six…) has created what they called Sekai Camera. A “camera” function that, geotagging your location whilst you literally walk around, provides your iPhone with information about the object/item/monument/whatever you are bashing into it at a given moment…

Fine.. at TechCrunch 50 the audience went off the roof, seemingly..

What sounds slightly complex is the geotagging capability, GPS based, into a supermarket.. still, impressive how six people, highly focused and with a vision, are able to stirr attention this way!!
Lovely, back to the garage?!??!???!

There is always hope…

Notes and unstructured thoughts on 2.0… Homo 2.0???

I have to admit, this blog is also very useful to have all your notes in one place, some sort of repository of (hopefully) fairly intelligent thinking…

So, since I will have to work pretty heavily on the entire spectrum of the 2.0 saga, I have to jot down some notes… ah, yep, I will be part of the discussion tables at the closing event of the IDC Innovation Forum that will be held in Milan next March (here is the info and whereabouts of the Forum), with the likes of Don Tapscott, Derrick De Kerckhove and a stack of Web pundits, artists and creatives, it will be a blast, believe me!!

Right, so… notes… the evolutionary path is, quite nicely indeed, a sort of step back to the village-like, tribal relationships of the societies pre-industrial revolution. There is a reprise, this time thanks to technology and with no Luddites in sight, of the necessity to exchange human relationship with the “piazza” of my liking.

It is even more important aspects of this evolution. Globally, you may have noticed, there is a massive outburst of social-related activities, themes, actions, whatever… green campaigns, humanitarian efforts, sustainable economies, cultural crossovers, it is a huge mixing, bridging, communicating, helping.. it seems like there is a real, planetary conscience that is guiding some acts of a large number of people.

I happened to discuss this with some Web experts at the recent Enteprise 2.0 conference and with a couple of university professors in the past couple of weeks, and we were all very interested of the implications. The question was whether it is the Web-network evolution that have ignited the process or it is rather a genetic attitude of mankind to seek for the community that has enabled the Web to become the social network we know today. The more techy amongst us actually feel like the hype and the “media” coverage upon Internet since the early 2000s is the real engine of this renewed planetary surge of the masses, whilst there has been a flimsy quoting the Band Aid in1984 as potentially the first massive conscience raising that have triggered the necessity to a better and more tight communication amongst actors in the social canvass… nice altogether.. guess we can really state that all the most innovative or evolutionary tech advances stem from a “communication” need, that is for sure..

What is more interesting it the actual disintegration of some capitalistic logics thanks to the Web and the social implication deriving from an hyper-connected World. The shift of power from producers to users is a substantial change in the orthodoxy and liturgy of the economy rite. What is indeed scarcely perceived and increasingly kept under the radar by who-knows-who is the actual revolutionary power of the Web as it is structured nowdays. It would be possible to reorganise and determine social canvasses, political agendas, country foreign political position by the power of referral, by free-flowing information, by scarcely controllable exchange of view points by geographically dispersed groups of people.. you know what I intend, being “discussant” is ever more powerful than simply being “listener”.. yet, this is kept under control by painting the entire “thing” as a youngish, sort of head-in-the-clouds stuff, the social Web is about SecondLife, some music sharing quite often via illegal platforms, photos, videos and rubbish like that.. you know, young stuff has never been very dangerous.. whilst the reality is about a massive net of brains working in well determined and shared directions.

I am personally stressing the concept of “brain-sourcing” as the highest effect of the “crowdsourcing” phenomena or the entire social evolution of the Web.. more so, why not using “GridBraining”????

So, it is a new specimen of human being that is born before our eyes or it is simply a permutation of the actual?? Is the Web something we use, we live, or is a prosthetic of our selves??? There is something like an “Homo 2.0″??? Video of my presentation at the Turin School of Business (audio in italian, for the slides let me know,  it is IDC stuff and copyrighted..) … More to come…

Enterprise 2.0 and an interested Italian audience

Just back in the office after a long two-day conference, held in Milan, on Virtualisation and Enterprise 2.0. I run as speaker and chairman some of the sessions yesterday and the entire of today’s discussion on E2.0.

Admittingly, I have tried to get all speeches and presentations on Monday as a sort of preparation for today big show.. I trust it went real fine!!!

Virtualisation technologies and SOA strategies have, admittingly, set up the enterprise IT environment to dynamically absorb all potential changes stemming from the E2.0 evolution. Most interestingly, we run a small in-conference survey on SOA perception, and over 50% of respondents admitted SOA was a fundamental pillar to respond efficiently to any potential market change. Very little about the techology complexity mix, very little about the nitty-gritty details on virtualisation (despite an hefty presence of VMware…), a lot of attention and feedback on the implied strategic and business changes SOA may enable. Cool.

Today the event went even better.. the room was full of very interested attendees, and the conversation, thanks to the two opening speeches, was directed toward the Web 2.0 social impact and the aftermath within the enterprise environment. The Q&A session went on forever (had to stop it at the end, quite an unique occurrence, I dare say..), the audience was most interested into networking math theories, Barabasi, adaptive systems and the complexity theory… questioning was raising towards the panel (myself, the italian managing director of Viadeo, Pietro Gentile, vice president of Intermedia and journalist expert in 2.0 topics, Claudio Pasqua, SEO and an early enthusiast of social networking and evolutionary web theories) as to address all those issues, asking for some clarification on likely futures opening up in front of the business community, about personality “caching” and data security, the evolution of Second Life and synthetic worlds… honestly, up until yesterday I had in front of me an audience that, when listening to such topics, coupled with words such as “change”, “strategy”, “evolution” et alia, most time was head-shaking, smiling, doing all sort of body-language mix up as to say “rubbish”..

We have all being absolutely stunned by the response, the interest, the willingness to know more and act accordingly. I have also to admit, there is very little knowledge on the fundamentals of the complexity theory, small worlds and the rest of, say, Barabasi thinking are far from being well distributed and understood, and yet I trust there is a massive change in approaching the systemic evolution of the enterprise into a rather more performing, market aware and “discussion-driven” actor. These are good news, more to come as soon as I have gathered some feedback and organised my thoughts!!

nvohk… crowdsourcing in management, or a nice try?!?!?

Browsing around, I bashed into a strange sort of a project.. nvohk, of which you find the banner down my sidebar, is a nice attempt to build up a community that will contribute to run (partially) an eco-friendly clothing company..

For a rather smallish annual fee, you are entitled to participate to such decisions as logo design, advertising strategy, marketing et alia… some of the “perks” of being part of this experiment are, I believe, rather intangible, as per the satisfaction to be “in the process” whilst the idea of having about 35% of profit shared with the members in form of “buying certificates” for nvohk products is kind of nice…

Yet, it won’t change the world, it will definitely pump some fresh air into my wardrobe (eventually..), will have me as part of a social-conscious community, and I may say “been there” should the thing really boom up!! Most of all, it is a nice experiment, someone called “socialism 2.0″.. nobody did??? OK, let’s do it from here, then!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is truly amazing…

2008: escape from Facebook…

… call me Snake…

And with that you thought you could master your way out of Facebook reach!?!?!? Wrong!!

The NYT reported a sort of nightmarish ordeal to have your data removed from Facebook servers once and for all… it actually reminds me of some lines I read some time ago about the spectacular attitude people have got recently in giving out large chunks of owns identities, despite all the fuss about privacy and personal data protection.. we are all cache-ing quite happily our beloved information, much more interested into adding friends to the already almost-useless pile of horrid nicks, without even considering than all those stored infos may be used against our desires, or as it seems will reside forever somewhere in the Net.. is it a new form  of eternity we are all seeking?? Becoming a long string of 0 and 1 is the ultimate in cloning??!?!?

On the serious side, there were already some concerns about the type-happy attitude we have all got, particularly since the idea of sharing infos amongst sites to speed up logging in procedures and such is increasingly under scrutiny..

I believe there was a “dissertation” here (text in Italian) about our online attitude towards sharing-socialising-posting… as said

we are what we browse

we are what we message

we are what we chat

we are what we mail

we are every information we produce, access or transform

and every change we make in the matrix is and always will be us!

Just a thought, mind you…

Mobile and smart, this is the future ahead!!

We have since long heralded these were times of changes, deep and systematic changes, basically an evolutionary step was taken before our eyes.

Yesterday the Barcelona Mobile World Congress slammed the doors open on a brand new future: definitely mobile and incredibly smart!!! All the major handset manufacturers have launched either brand new hyper-powerful phones or revamped massively some ol’darlings.

New specimens that are making all the technofans drooling are popping up about anywhere… SonyEricsson Xperia X1 is one heck of a smartphone, and please notice the nice add of HSUPA connectivity on top of the now-basic HSDPA.. users may start (where available..) enjoying uploading auto-generated contents at a decent speed and thus augmenting the mSocial experience level.. and somewhere there is a S-video connectivity…

Yep, there are the much awaited Gphone prototypes on the catwalk, they cracks open the very concept of “smart” and “phone” suggesting the future may have a simil-mobile-smart-phone form factor to add/substitute the laptop environment… particularly when considering that most of those smarties are yielding a smashing Wi-Fi capability to top connectivity up..

Also check a bunch of Samsung’s.. SGH-G810, a top of the range, feature-full smartphone, its sort of younger brother i200, topping the whole bunch up with the ever-so-gorgeous Soul, and Nokia N78, N96, and the list goes on (why not including the nice and crisp Garmin NuviPhone??)… (btw, thanks to Telefonino.net for the infos…)

You enjoy browsing around..

Bottom line, the platform for a significant change in lifestyle is on, pretty much available to the everyday man, albeit an above-average, well off technofan for the time being, services are all converging into the mobile device to enhance and top up the users’ experience… it is still a matter of understanding where are the systematic users that will immediately shift communication paradigm to embrace the new tech (the posers are not interesting in the long term mobile services uptake..), and how these may eventually relate to the slower tribes/clusters… again, it is a matter of crossing the technology chasm..

One hurdle will be tariffing and data packages.. the easy answer is an all-inclusive monthly fee, plus an ecosystem of pay-per-use third party services, but the basics such as calls, Web navigation (down and upload) and a basic GPS navigation should be easily available and hassle-free… we will see…

Still, on top of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and lots of other such things, we are forced to include a Mobile 2.0?? Already done?? Dunno, but you got the overall idea…

Being “social” will pass through the mobile device in an empowered way, and as we said back in the early UMTS days, the mobile may actually become a super-hub of anyone’s digital lifestyle, able to connect and re-distribute contents and activities to the more bulky, less mobile items of our XXI century experience.. and yep, that includes our beloved laptop!!!

How social are you?? Fast enough??

I have started my blogging experience a little short of a year ago, and I have to admit it has been rewarding and challenging, fun and worrisome, but most of all it has been like a long, unplanned backpacking trip along the roads of social evolution and global changes! And, should you be so nice to have read me all along this time, it is a bless for a curious being the like of myself..

I have started this personal journey when MySpace was one of the coolest place to be in, SecondLife was supposed to position as the next big thing for human interaction and business ventures, one year ago there were articles about how cool is blogging about, the entire 2.0 was an humongous affair encompassing and including the whole of mankind and any aspect derived from it (almost, say…).

Then, I went on holiday in Tanzania, Zanzibar to be precise, and spent a whole week without even thinking about wearing shoes, my feet gorging on white and warm sand and more white and warm sand, my skin crackling into the African sun..let alone considering the World stressed about whether being 1.0 or 2.0 or x.0 at all…

I stepped into a plane, packed full with over-talkative holiday village goers, and slowly but surely I hit the -2° in Milan… a night sleep, on it was the PC the morning after and here it is…

MySpace has been dubbed as “uncool”, nevermind the overall results (incidentally, this drop in page views I saw it first mentioned here, dating back Sept. 11th.. ouch…), SecondLife seems to have trouble in mocking the real world as someone was hoping it would have done (silly, silly, silly!!!), recently the most “real” stuff, money, has been quite regulated and there is no longer that “be there, be rich” sort of approach (something along the lines of the first appearance of the Web in our daily existence back in, say, ’95), and most of all there is no longer such ranting about “2.0″….

More importantly, CES in Las Vegas has finally completed the transition to a “business-determined” social ecosystem to a “consumer-driven” fabric… I read endless analysis concentrating on how the corporate environment has to mimic the private users dynamics, how important is to accomodate users’ needs, also in technology terms, as to foster a superior working environment, tailored and geared to make the most of each individual working style and “social graph”….

Now, this is the next one you will be pestered about in the coming months: SOCIAL GRAPH.

Six degree of separation, networks, nodes and hubs, this is all making the news, together with complexity theory and chaos.. finally someone have made the point: interconnecting more than a billion people is not as simple as plugging a PC into the socket.. it is a matter of re-defining the social canvass, it is a matter of managing a life of endless information streaming across the planet, it is about one, large, living organism… quite a long time ago I posted about what I called LITO, Living Information Technology Organism.. we may all want to go back and study evolutionary theories instead that SecondLife for Dummies…

Welcome back, I hope a marvellous 2008 for all of you!!! It will be a nice ride, stay tuned!!

Want to party in Second Life??? Go to Rome universities!!!

Second Life is a plethora of different things, depending on your perspective, your attitude and will to explore… it is, as previously said, a spectacular ecosystem to foster communication, collaboration of some sort, and occasionally it is a learning platform…

If you put all these things together, and add some festive atmosphere, there you are: two Rome’s universities are having their Xmas and New Year’s party together in Second Life!! Università di Roma Tre and UniNettuno, a distant learning leading university, will launch the party at 5pm CET, both at the Roman premises of the URT and on line, on a Second Life space… the RL (real life!) event will be broadcasted onto the island’s screens, there will be DJ sets, dancers and the whole paraphernalia!!! The entire event will be streamed over satellite channels Dec. 31st.

It is designed to be an opportunity for those international students of UniNettuno that want to keep in touch with fellows, it is an opportunity to ignite a cross-fertilisation program between universities and foster collaboration!!  Meanwhile, get your flurry sorted out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please, would you Kindle drop down that book??

Technology is, clearly, a never-ending race or, as someone put it nicely, “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born” (yep, Alan Kay, to be precise..), so it seems unavoidable that someone will try (again) to invent, re-invent or envision a bit-and-byte device to substitute all those heavy, environmental unfriendly, space-wasting and, heck, dust collectors called books!!!!! When that innovation-evolution-revolution comes from the very company that made the book itself one of the most rewarding business items on the Planet, an appropriate and bias-free thought is due. Bezos and his Amazon announces the creation and launch of Kindle, the ultimate reading machine..

First, a reading on Newsweek for the “Bezos’ pensiero“, aka his philosophy and the fundamentals behind this tech launch.. I let you go over the detail and the tech specification of the object (notably a sleek, whitish piece of tech… anyone??!?!?), whilst I would like to focus on a couple of remarks.

It has been made a comparison between the digitisation of other media, such as music and video, and for argument’ sake I may question that music went from a vinyl-based experience, enhanced through the years via superior playing and sound amplification capability, to a CD-based reproduction and lately to the full digital mp3 (and Bros..). Vinyl and CD has got roughly the same “playing liturgy”, whilst the mp3 family goes back to replicate and enhance the “walkman” style (a walkable substitute of vinyl via cassettes..), gaining in music storage space / handling and output quality. Bottom line: the acts, the experience of the user was similar to the ol’ days, gains were mainly in space, music library “management”, and quality of output. Then, if in a rainy and cold day you put on a vinyl of Nina Simone or the digitalised version of it, pretty much the same (someone would argue vinyls were more “alive” than the perfection of CDs..). Video goes pretty much along the same lines, better picture, easy storage and management, and the rest.. experience is again fairly similar in its inner procedures, the actual liturgy!

Now, the book… could we say it is an entirely different matter??? You do your thinking, but I believe there are more “senses” involved to make the experience invaluable, the liturgy about reading a book and using an eBook is to me entirely different. One point to the book to this one.

On the other hand, as posted in other occasions, it is not a matter of being a “systematic” user of the new Kindle, but rather finding the own critical way of putting it into our personal technology mix. Do you love to read your Chatwin novels but simply browse and use business books??? Is it great for you to have all those quantum mechanics reference texts in the backpack but you are not the size of a Canadian lumberjack?? There you go.. Kindle does the trick!!

Let me put it in a different way… today Milan has got a wintery set up, sky is grey and kind of rainy, it is cold.. I would love to sit in a comfy armchair, a superb cup of coffee to sip and a nice BOOK to read… now, incidentally I am at work, I have to prepare a presentation to deliver with my speech at the School of Business Administration in Turin, it is about Digital Ecosystems and Professional Networks, I may want to read a few things and would love to go and SEARCH on my Kindle about, say, “metaverse” and “business”… I can browse and access to knowledge, I could potentially link together the power of Internet (reference, information..) with the batch-approach to info-digestion a “kindle” would provide: I find, buy and read when needed, off-line.. cool..

Experience is something complex and multifaceted, we live multi-experience lifestyles, and it would be utterly restrictive to believe there won’t be differences anymore in one’s daily activities… there will be a time for a book, there will be also a time for Kindle, for some those will converge and melt into something new, for others there will always be two separate and rewarding experience nonetheless.

Difference and divergence still make the difference, after all, every innovation stems out from someone diverging from status quo…

UPDATE: you may want to browse through this “live performance”… and do not forget to click and jump to the Amazon site, there is the new born baby in all its glory!!!!

Google Android won’t land in Italy

It may be just marketing, as someone said, it may be a strange and more appealing form of crowdsourcing, nevertheless Google has launched a massive, global and rich contest for the best apps developed over (for???) Android. It will be a stunning (for me, at least!!) $10 million … Great!!! The best developers, the most edgy geniuses worldwide will squeeze their brains and type like hell to deliver the most incredible array of mobile applications (sort of, say..). Everybody apart from the beautiful minds of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan and Myanmar. That is the club of the thug nations, as it seems. PLUS ITALY AND QUEBEC!!!!!!!!!

It is not the case that “pizzaioli” and lumberjacks are on the list of public enemies, but the two countries are out of the contest for some local legal boundaries… the Italian case here is about

• prizes that must be assigned in presence of notary public and representatives from consumer associations;
• prizes that are not delivered for any reason must be donated to non profit organisations, pre-listed on the contest rules;
• the contest has to be registered, via a truck-load of papers, to a couple of different Ministries in Italy and the State Monopoly….

which, ultimately, build up a nice barrier to an initiative that cannot (I assume) cope with “State” but it is geared, tailored, designed and aimed at speeding up a business issue and create innovation of some sort…  so, Italians are out.. apart from the opportunity someone would have had to gain some money and popularity, the entire Italian IT community and the country itself would somewhat benefit (in terms of “innovative” brand, so to speak) from a local developer in the winner list for such an appealing forward-looking project in a fast paced tech environment… and now I would like to read again that Italy is one of the most advanced mobile communication markets worldwide, maybe after Japan and Korea…

Twitter, low expectations and “being critical”!!

Again.  Another social phenomena. Twitter is making the press in a more pressing manner than before.

Which I do not mind, but it all seems like adding to that disease I once called “cyber-inadequacy”. You’re not twittering???!?!? How sad could your life be??? Small circle of friends??? No friends whatsoever??? Meanwhile, I am enjoying my lifetime  three friends hanging around the Mediterranean with the newly bought 39-feet Azimuth one of the above decided to get to reward himself, nevermind someone with a weird nick lost somewhere…

Still, it is interesting to notice that someone pointed out as, for this new born communication arena, you may have a sort of a batch approach, a lower expectation level, an on-off style. Something like  I AM NOT ALWAYS CONNECTED!!!!!!!!!!! TO YOU AT LEAST!!!! Which I believe is pretty much a revolutionary and almost blasphemous thought. Nonetheless, I love it!!!

This is the first hint, the initial sparkle, the subtle rise of the “power of disconnection” we spoke in an earlier post, it is about being a “critical” user of technology..

Nice one, we get back some room  for ourselves, not to be shared necessarily with the rest of the Planet, and most interestingly we should not feel guilty about!!!!!

Hang around and work in Japan!!

Creativity is such an overrated word these days, but sometimes it is more than applicable to everyday’s touch of genius.. This is, roughly, the situation (courtesy of Joy Ito): youngsters in Japan have become some sort of hang-around-and-see-what-happen group, with very little inclination in sorting our their lives and hunt for the proper job, standard life.. the World is mutating so fast, life is a big swirl of occurrences and possibilities and, as the drunken man leaning on a lamp post with his home key in the hand and “if the world is swirling sooo fast, sooner or later my home will pass from here”, they wait and see, doing almost nothing.

So, some businesses may have trouble in finding a decent workforce, or even a workforce altogether… so, the sparkle of genius comes in.. you may know this already, I did not (cannot have a God-like, all-embracing knowledge.. can I???), but here it comes Otetsudai Networks (if you have any Japanese language skill click here)!!!!

The “thingy”, run by Mr Sunagawa, basically puts together demand and offer, nothing new, here but, wait..

Say you need someone to help out your car-wash given the recent sandy rain..you hit ON, in which you put down your request (someone to help washing cars for four hours….), people that are connected (subscribed) to ON will actually see you ads, and will apply to the “position”, if they want, if they need some cash, if they have some spare time, if, if, if…. Now the icing on the cake.. people will be on GPS, thus will see and will let you see the entire picture: where is the job, how far from my position, and for you how many people applied, how far they are and which sort of experience they may have…(in washing cars, yep, you know..). This “referral” is actually applied also to the job advertiser (how good the owner-manager is, the pay, the actual workplace…).

You choose the right chap/lady, and there you are, problem sorted for the car-wash and some cash changes hands, allowing the kiddie to spend it, and having it circulating, and so, and then, and the rest…

Why it is interesting?? Clearly it makes the most of the tech available: mobile networks, GPS, some Web 2.0 features (mashing up sites with location-aware information), the amazing array of mobile devices scattered allover the place (and people living in full symbioses with them..ring any bell, Italy???), but most importantly it is designed after analysing in full details a young tribe that is populating a modern city, the service has leveraged a modification of the social canvass to deliver a win-win solution for all parties involved. Most effective I dare say, and without starting a social debate on temporary jobbing, the condition of the youngest in large urban conglomerates and blah blah, but solving a rather simple equation: problem, solution (in this case good enough..). Add to the recipe some flexible work regulation (I believe..), and above all acceptance of social changes and there you are, a modern city-society problem solving activity. No questioning on whether this is good or bad, and furthermore that is private and not governative (who cares…), if it solves a problem or augment recrudescence, I am just stressing the effectiveness of social and urban tribes analysis. With very little talk on innovation, evolution, case studies, round tables and so forth.. it has been simply done.

Would like to see it happen closer to home..

MySpace loud voice will be heard above the Sky(pe)!!

The very concept of value got an entirely different meaning since the planetary explosion of the Internet phenomena, insofar “value” was increasingly linked to “users” or, more disgustingly put, “eye balls”. Then came the day in which the old World ruler, Money, claimed back its throne and there it was, the Internet bubble….

Slowly but surely, the old remnants of the Internet started to morph and mesh, evolve, develop into new, unprecedentedly seen permutations and those are called the Web 2.0 days, in which the concept of value, again, moved towards more alluring shores, Community and Social Network (again an elegant permutation of “eye balls” to some). This being the present era, it is quite understandable that champions arise and fall, alliances are made and demolished.. and in this context the once-independent Skype, the ever-so-famous “open communication” platform, was bought by the other ever-so-famous eBay, the everyone’s favorite auction site, in the attempt to breed a super-champion (as if we were talking about Varenne…). The attempt failed.

But persistence is a quality not to be overlooked and there we are, another super-breeding exercise on the run: Skype and MySpace, another ever-so-famous social networking site, are somewhat beginning the preliminaries..

This could make some sense, since both companies are involved in the communication arena with a “social” flair.. minor hiccups are found in the presently not so strong (as before) market positioning of both, once the undisputed rulers today are at the most part of an oligarchy..

Whether the voice capability added (going to be added..) to MySpace will revamp the social site, which has experienced a significant drop in visits, pageviews (-20%!!), and a bunch of other variables (data from Compete, August 07 vs. July07…), and more importantly whether users will like to add another way of communicating (also considering that, as it seems from other Compete analysis, MySpace users tend to stick with the site or eventually to drop off altogether and move away – possibly from the social networking two big contenders, the other one being Facebook?!?!?!) .. is it something like the incoming diatribe between convergence-divergence, in this case meaning “I will use the appropriate communication medium (and intensity) according to the people I am interacting with??”. MySpace’s fundamentals were about profiles, bits of digital life gathered for others to see, and with a sort of near real time communication.. if that has to be enhanced by adding voice to the mix I found it quite debatable. Then again, I trust someone have been playing quite thoroughly with the Web tribes concepts…

PS So, why not adding voice capability to avatars, and the possibility to run a sort of “avatar multi-conference” as to interact with several other “Us”??!??! Endless possibility, but heck, do not beat the drums too early!!!

Wi Fi in the Park, and Milan goes on air..

You all know that I am not staggeringly in love with Milan, which I believe is somewhat living and pretending way above its current status of second-tier European city, however, “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” and there we are.. there is, for the not-in-the-know, a lovely park in the middle of the city, Parco Sempione, which should actually be considered as the local version of NY Central Park or London’s Hyde Park (sort of..), and it is packed full with the usual fauna of joggers, mums with going-to-be-famous babies, some execs and other city parks’ paraphernalia. The whole community will enjoy the beauty of Wi Fi connection across the park!! Well, most of the park…

There is a “strategically positioned” antenna over the Torre Branca, sort of in the middle of the park, and some smaller antennas in four other location. The tricky part is the access, which is actually going via a “card” that the WiFi surfer should collect in dedicated “outlets” nearby the antennas (as the Corriere della Sera points out), and the card will guarantee access for three hours to be spent throughout the day. The card is free, seemingly for now…. Ah, forgot, to get the card you have to leave your full name, no nicknames allowed , and an identity document number.

Now, that is particularly ludicrous, even for an over-rated city like Milan. Could you actually think about how to complicate something that should be “free” in the first place a tad more???? Why do I have to give out all those info??? To protect who from what?? Do come along….

The nice thing is that the local “assessore” (someone in charge something, at municipality level) for the urban layout stated “the parks are our top priority” when considering the Wi Fi implementation, and the very chap claims “so that we will allure a larger number of people to go about the park to study and work” as if I rather be stuck in the office if I had not my boss checking for my whereabouts.. rubbish, utter rubbish and sounds very much like “parrot talking”…

And yet the entire plan, which entails the coverage of the urban territory by 2009, via more than 4,000 access points, is a nice step forward to the fuellest coverage to be available by 2015 for the “Expo” to be held in Milan. It is interesting, it is a nice way of pushing forward a city that may have lots to offer to residents and tourists alike, but the feeling is, again, that Milan is playing like it were a much larger and much more important city. And it is playing way too bad!!!

It has already been mentioned a “feasibility study” to be prepared in collaboration with the local Polytechnic, which I trust would lead to proving the project will have massive returns for the parties involved.. when, not too long ago, the city of San Francisco (!!!!) had some trouble justifying its project of Wi Fi cabling… SF, at the very heart of the tech evolution!!!

Guess if that rings any bell ….

In the meanwhile, it has already been stated that the wireless coverage of the city will not be free for surfers, and furthermore there will be a public tender to award the project… that would allow an immediate cash back into some pockets, with very little creative effort.. so, nevermind people would eventually pay for some contents, nevermind the fact that the municipality could use the widespread capability of being in touch with a range of potential “customers” via laptop or, increasingly, mobile devices to push for entertainment offers (info, tickets, discounts, coupons…) that may create a flow of activity and opportunities for a plethora of commercial actors (which would pay, say, for advertising… isn’t that the model of all the top flying Web companies today???)… and you could go a long way along these lines… why on Earth hindering the overall uptake of such a nice opportunity just to make money the easy (potentially) way??? That’s silly… (for the project itself, not for the pockets that may benefit from sheer stupidity..)

So, the overall idea of “virtual streets” in Milan along the old, real ones comes to a price.. for the users to pay… guess most of the people will keep on browsing the nice cafes and shops in the Triangolo della Moda and will be oblivious of Wi Fi.. apart from the typical Milanese posers, but that is another story..

PS By the way, if the municipality wanted to measure the citizens’ satisfaction for such a service, first should have not bother everyone with that data collection via crucis, and secondly, should have potentially launched the project not at the very doorstep of the autumn rainy season and winter cold… talking about stupidity…

Our world in 3D

I have already mentioned that, as of today, VWs are a superb 3D communication medium, and as such should be considered. Today, the 3D capabilities of VWs have been (seemingly) extended in a massive and very powerful way. Multiverse Networks, a company based in Mountain View (must be the air in that place…), will deliver a “platform” to create virtual environments  based on Google’s 3D Warehouse and G-Earth captures. The ultimate mashup so far…

The possibilities are endless, I believe. Certainly the entertainment industry and online gaming may produce some nice outcomes, but also the open source community could have a massive go at it and, why not, challenge some of the largest gaming companies on one or two titles, particularly when development will take the form of a “wiki” work, with everyone contributing with own’s ideas and stuff from the media scrap book in drive E: …

Also, that would open up a playground for the tourist industry, allowing anyone to experience a place without necessarily being there (that would be a tremendous interactive brochure, wouldn’t it?)..now, since the tech running in the background is currently set to support just a thousand of concurrent users, that would possibly cater for a premium experience for some “already alive” VWs… and what about a boost to the eCommerce and eBusiness industry??

And more to come..

Now, the overall feeling is… JUST GIVE ME A SEC!!!!!!!!! It is absolutely incredible the pace evolution has taken, and the immense wealth of opportunities, ideas, projects, technology that can be combined to create something that was not even remotely there a month ago. The extreme power of the so-called Web 2.0 is simply this: put together things and allow people to play with it, and put together those new things and allow people to play with it, and put together those new things and allow people to play with it… a creative “nuclear” reaction set to blow the established and know territories away. In which way, form and intensity is yet to be understood, if it ever will.

Yesterday we were pointing out that relying on numbers when working at the edge of chaos may actually prove somewhat useless, or at least partial… 24hrs after that, I repeat that the most important asset you may boast when analysing such a mutating scenario is a superior connection between your right and left brain hemispheres, since our parallel processing capabilities are constantly challenged. Someone could call that “an open mind”..

However, enjoy the show!

Virtual worlds and the gold rush..

Long time ago, my mum bought for an unknown reason a book titled The Sword of Shannara. Admittingly, I had not read any fantasy before that one (no, not even the Lord of the Rings..), but I quite fell for the plot, the adventure, the…everything.. and I thought what an amazing movie that would be, or what a smashing game it could become..

I sometimes believe that quite a lot of our inventions, creations, and to some extent evolutionary endeavors come from the way we grew with our dreams, what we wanted to do and what we liked when we were free to play.. thus I like to think that the current hype and the explosion of the virtual world frenzy could also stem out of other than business opportunities.. it is like traveling in spaces and realms made by our imagination, and more interestingly composed by the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people like us..

The child in us is constantly in charge..

Then, incidentally, dreams are valued for what they are, the food for anyone’s soul, and thus monetise that is quite an easy and most interesting task.. in the recent times the VW environment has gained traction and a wealth of venture capitalists have decided to inject fresh capital into the dream theatre, according to Virtual Worlds Management that amounted to an hefty $1billion.. more on that here..

Given that there is no philanthropy involved, I have to assume the entire operation yields some sort of return (apart from cashing the venture capital by the VW owner..) .. ads??? No way, we have already discussed about the potential fallout of extensive ads campaign into originally-free worlds..eBiz? Perhaps, but not in the immediate future, again for the very reason the VW existed in the first place, connection amongst dreamers, and thus very little inclination in spending frenzy here..(maybe at a later stage..). So, where’s the beef? Lateral return? As in brand equity, standing, fit or anything intangible?? That would actually make some sort of sense, since you may operate in an “intangible” world…

Discussion open, in the meanwhile dream on!!!

UPDATE: and, to put it straight, investments in VW should also leverage something like this Metaverse Market Index, due to be launched at the San Jose convention, October 10th … gosh…

Facebook and how to spoil a piazza…

It seems that today there are two types of frenzy within the business community, either to conquer the outer space or to get hold of a worldwide renown social site… now it is Facebook that makes the press!!

Both may actually signify that “the World is not enough” (I have to stop watchin’ telly…) and there is a dare need to discover new frontiers .. where to place ads, maybe???!??!?!

The valuation Microsoft is currently placing on each and every couple of eyeballs in FB is around 66$, which is significantly higher to the 11$ paid for MySpace’s eyeballs… it seems that users do not really love to be considered “eyeballs” and thus MySpace performances have been going slightly down, as the Italian “La Repubblica” pinpoints, or at least are shadowed by those of the going-to-be-acquired Facebook (541% growth in UK vs. 20%..). Google, incidentally, is part of the race…

However, point is: would it possibly be that the fame of a social network in the business community may become inversely proportional to its resilience within the Web community itself???

Are we still perceiving that the entrance of a revenue-driven behemoth is hindering freedom altogether???

After all, why on Earth Mark Zuckerberg would like to impose or push anything to his beloved audience?? For no reason whatsoever, insofar that would be a risky move and prone to, well, spoil the fun of it all and slightly piss .. sorry, upset customers.. that is exactly why he is cleverly cashing in and selling the whole thing off to someone that will transform a free space into a massive billboard.. or something along the line..

In the meanwhile, waiting for an easy way to move one’s identity around (see other posts..) we will browse around to find the perfect hangout, that lovely place without ads, silly people showing off fake boobs or six-packs, in an attempt to be the next Web-phenomena, and without tens of thousands of friends we do not know anything about!!

Mashup….wazzuuuuuupppp??????

We all know that some of the features that people keep on tagging as “Web 2.0″ are about content creation, elaboration and management, as to obtain an auto-generated content stream to “widecast” … this is quite nicely combined with the possibility to have two or more set of contents (web sites, information, data, whatever…) interacting to create a brand new entity, an hybrid, an end-results of a careful dosing of ingredients.. aka a “mashup”!!!

Now, that has probably been a kingdom few fairly skilled individuals could fathom and approach, and then mash, mix, combine were all words for the initiated ones ..  but today, this all come down to a dead-easy level, as it seems with this Intel (wow!!) MashMaker!!

Vivienne Westwood has said just yesterday, at the celebration party held in Milan for her 35th anniversary in the fashion industry, that

this is a terrible World, in which anybody thinks anymore: everybody’s watching TV, nobody’s reading or looking for arts, and yet people constantly want to express themselves, but have got nothing inside and nothing interesting to say, they are boring…

This may actually be slightly harsh, but considering Ms Westwood is the least she could have said about the current intellectual bankrupt we are witnessing, still it is nice to sit and wait about the results coming from combination, cross-fertilisation and fusion of different experiences… after all a meticcio is actually stronger than the separate parts…

However, and despite the above, one word of advice (not that I am anybody to take this honour..): as all top DJs could tell you, two good songs do not get mixed nicely together into something worth earing all that easily, superior skills (intelligence) are needed to arbitrate amongst parts to reach a better One.. and skills (…) are in short supply..

I am all in one piece.. I mean in one place!!

You know, since quite a long time we have all followed the latest “virtual” hype, and today our cyber identity is fragmented and scattered in zillion of different places..

This would be a case for a good psycho therapy, needless to say virtual,  but instead of lying down somewhere in SL and telling a flurry how complicated and desperate was our childhood (nevermind our adult life, to come to that…), someone actually thought about gathering all our remains into one place, which was basically sort of “pre-Web 2.0 BigBang” kind of status…

Some months ago I believe it was IBM going about a cyber passport (sort of) to go and byte-jumping across virtual immensities to experience different worlds whilst maintaining our electro-personality (or virtual projection of real-life personality, as some studies do actually argument..), then someone cristallised all that in the nicer idea of “aggregate lifestreams”… here is a nice compendium of thinkings… (oldish post of Steve Rubel but kind of OK to read..)

Quite clearly, being our personality a kaleidoscope of emotions and interests, it is unlikely we can satisfy our curiosity all in one place (otherwise any marriages would really last forever!!!) whilst, on the other hand, it is quite disturbing to think about our entire time spent in chasing the update of “n” contacts, profiles, sites, virtual friendships and so forth… so, post once and distribute allover, collate ourselves into one space (sort of…say… my space.. kind of… but seems a spoiled idea…), have all your eBits in one place, all you created, everything, a “river of news” for other to swim in and enjoy (like this example here..)!!

eClippings then, a personal working table, a barebone website, a social network element without the social and the network as they were, it is about MySelf and You… seems like a nice way to go back to square one, where the individual is the pivot, emerging from the mob and allowing a selected group of people to have full access to his entire eLife. The cyber existence has got another layer, the individual, 360°, on top of the social network…

Or, rather, is a hyper-MeNetwork … I am networking myself… I am stepping over the six degrees that separates Me from Myself from I…

Yep, guess we may need a good doctor any time soon.. funny though…

SecondLife is a FreeLife???

It seems it is, actually!!! A group of avatar (people??), amongst which there are journalists, photographers, writers of all sort and most definitely virtual freelancers, hired directly online to tell the rest of us about SecondLife and its wonders: FreeLife is born!!!!

Couple of things: it is written in both English and Italian, it can be pdf-downloaded from several locations across SL …

Is it all alive and kicking then, despite the doomsday reports of businesses jumping off the SL phenomenon??? Seemingly so, the fun is still there! The fun, yep…

Web TV.. damn, just got that satellite thing..

Now… we knew IPTV was kind of hot on someone’s agenda, and as it seems, it still is! MySpace (wasn’t that place where you used to mingle and meet…) is going to launch miniseries on its portal..

I will keep it short: what about the autogenerated contents??? Or, admittingly, this post was true at the end???? As soon as the mass is there, ready to digest the next rubbish, there you go, it’s on its way.. so much for creative freedom..

At least, as soon as one is down, somewhere in cyberspace there is always another place for the pure ones!!

But, as it stands, now I have got a satellite connection, three WebTVs, two DVD readers, plus a PlayStation and three laptops, a couple of MP3 readers and a portable media player.. would I ever see the sunshine again?? Would I ever see this planet the way I remember it last time I went out???

Again, think about “attention”.. beware…

More on SciVee…

Sometimes we get it first!!

More on scientists “youtubing” around..

Everything’s real in virtual worlds..

Every now and then (in Internet time that’s the time in between lunch and dinner..) virtual worlds are coming back (never went away, mind you…) with rejuvenated energy and a bunch of titanium-like statement, pretty much like the one Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, made at the Influence Forum 2007 in Australia (here).

Mr Twomey argues the virtual world will most definitely be the future of global commerce, nevermind ecommerce.. One of the most interesting factors would be, seemingly, the migration of “gaming experience” into much more commercial interactions, as thus to maximise an already established “virtual experience” into a real life problem-solver tool.

And, since SecondLife is the current champion, that is the springboard for future thinking..

Now, despite SL keeps on producing nice bits of activity, such as auctions of virtual goods (for real money, to come to that, again!!), there are few issues to be sorted out before ever thinking about having virtual worlds as the solution for troubled consumer spending patterns and new industrial value network..

Again, it is a cultural approach in the first place, do not forget that most of the people interacting at a decent level of complexity over the Web are a well defined tribe and, by no means, a proxy for a more society-wide assumption of what interactions would look like in the near future.

Then, there is a matter of the technology involved or, better, the ease of the virtual experience that would be required to transform it from a game-like system to a more business-effective ecosystem (data flow, control, identity match, data storage, retrieval, regulatory and compliance…).

Then, the “cui prodest”. In a business environment, at least up until today, anything entering the door downstairs should produce a business enhancement in some form, being that strategic positioning, operation streamlining, pure and simple profit, whatever you may consider “enhancement” but, I trust after the Internet bubble of circa 2000, companies would not, and should not do something just because “it is cool”.. What you consider cool and must-have may not be seen likewise by your value network, that meaning a problem in coherent supply strategy, co-marketing, awareness building policies and lots of other nice edgy things..

As already stated by some press, large corporation are reconsidering the SL presence, since early results were not as expected. Which is, per se, a massive blunder… expecting what???? Selling what??? In a place where most people go and interact with others, have fun and live the experience of being there… guess they may be little concern about buying “real” goods (or marketing message) and rather going for fun things such as angel wings to fly around (or gather for discussing issues, as in a large instant messaging platform…at least for now, then we will see….!!!).

They are all missing the point. Virtual worlds are in the first place a nice corporate training ground for alternative positioning strategy and tactics, it is also a nice laboratory to experiment tribe clustering (customer segmentation, to use a paleolithic definition), and to prove the ability to listen instead of pestering with information… virtual worlds are places where the “power of referral” is fundamental, but you should get the referral in the first place, and what you did in a “PreviousLife” is not a guarantee to find one in a byte-based world.

So, culture, technology, strategy, communication. In a world, the entire corporate structure. Get to work, soon. Otherwise don’t bother talking.

Mr Twomey may be right, but he needs convincing a hell of a lot of people, first…

Back off Tina Tequila, Science is on air!!!!

I believe that, for at least a bunch of us, the advent of satellite TV was not cheered because of the latest adventure of silly housewives, gory face liftings or the latest in reality shows, but also for the possibility to dig into the realm of science, in a sort of childish attempt to understand how the heck that people could have traveled faster than lightspeed, or why, oh why the deoxyribonucleic acid got that silly name in the first place.. ok, fair enough, those were not the questions haunting our nights…nevertheless, it is interesting to notice that, after having the new Web forms populated by boobs, silly jokes, stupid videos and overly bloated egos, someone thought that, why not, some (to some) interesting topics may get the dignity to got out from classrooms, awful ftp-based web sites and get broadcasted!!

The chemistry lessons of my high-school teacher were absolutely great, it would have been great to see those on web videos, fun and knowledge were going well together…

Anyway, there may be also other such examples, but I guess that an initiative out of the usual broadcasting networks or more recent Web TV initiatives is such a wonderful example to stress that the Web is a tribe-oriented space, and not all tribes are brainless…

Mind the Gap!! The Web, a map, and you…

I believe that, some time ago, we discussed about the role and importance of “shepherds” within the new Web 2.0 environment… that concept has been extended to create the Web 200 Trend map!!

It is funny, tough, that is made upon the intricacies of the Tokyo underground, since I will be there in a matter of days and that assumption does not make me any happier, but is great nonetheless!!!

iA, the Japanese Information Architects group, created the map according to trend lines, and main themes such as Sharing, Main Sites, News, Tools… some biases in putting Baidu and Orkut on the Main Sites line??? SecondLife is farther down the Community line than Hi5, partially cloudy vs. full sunshine…

On top of that, iA stretched itself to forecast the future for each site.. MSN is in a rainy spot, WordPress is shining bright (ehi, there, cheer up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), plus there is also a “usability” ranking, from 0.5 (awful????) to 2.5 (a dream came true???)…

Websurfers are at the center spot….again, the Web is us!!!

Right.. it may be a nice exercise, it may have no scientific value whatsoever, you may disagree with it, but, heck, is a hell of a desktop picture!!!!!!!!!

The Web is us.. damn!!!!

This was nice to read.. For once, there is a massive attack to the social aspect of the Web 2.0, dubbing the whole phenomenon and the new actors as a cyberswamp, which is despite the meaning a tremendous image of the current Internet!!!! ….writers…

However, the whole debate seems to head to the unprofessional status of most Web contributors, bloggers et alia, and Andrew Keen claims

the intellectual quality of what the crowd produces is very low.

I may concede this could also be true… on the other hand, media as a whole (considering that Keen reasoning is about Internet as a “Whole”) are quite arguably producing high value inputs and analysis, cultural advances and critical agoras. I have to stress the proliferation of TV shows for “peepers” such as Big Brother and sons, talk shows the highest point of which is whether someone’s big boobs are a fake or whether someone’s neighbor did such an baaaad thing to sleep with the gardener, I hear every single day politicians demolishing every possible rule of grammar and common sense, newspapers are quite often guided by the nearest interest (political turnaround), critics do critic about something they have never ever experienced (SecondLife is an example a friend is pinpointing here).

So, let’s not trail on that, the official holders of knowledge, the Druids of XXI Century are not really the “professional” I dare say… and “Amateurs”, as he seems to like calling most of Web 2.0 contributors, may actually be exactly that, simple people interested in a subject and willing to write down opinions, BUT:

• you are not obliged to read that stuff;
• if you do and you don’t like it you may want to say something, to the author and to your community (“beware of b@&&@cks…”), thus limiting the news viral spreading;
• you may want also to respond with your immense knowledge and scorn the poor chap;
• if you read it, and it is all utter rubbish, and “since it is on the Web it must be true” is your first thought, then you need serious help and lots of tender loving care (try “rehab from Web pollution” kind of therapy!!)

In a few words, people are left with a brain and some critical attitude as well, we deserve what we get and we may want to trust and believe what is more comfortable with our current train of life events and the environment we live in, however we are always free to challenge, refuse and debate.

And, who knows, should you being not totally “naif” yourself, you may put together so called “experts” vision and the “amateurs” one and come up with your own conclusions… it may be nice, have a go… and we may also want to pay for contents, but who says those very contents are worthwhile? As of today, most often the community, your peers, your trusted acquaintances… the main asset of Web 2.0 is the “power of referral”… have a thought on that.. what is “true” is no longer what someone unknown and lost in a far, far away editorial unit says it is, but what the people I believe in say it may be..

Thus, what is intrinsically interesting about the Web itself and the “social” aspect of Web 2.0 is the potential to gather “another person’s version of the truth” (a selected one, mind you!!! Selected by you, incidentally..) as Keen said, simply to challenge ours, and see whether we are comfortable where we are or else…fair enough, we cannot consider every whiff the forerunner of a massive hurricane.. but to keep steady in your belief you may want to challenge them every now and then, and who knows, maybe there is someone out there able to put us against ourselves…

Despite all wishes and desires, nobody’s got the Holy Grail in his hands, questioning about all aspects in life actually drove evolution and, as it seems, if we have always believed what the establishment told us, we could still trust the Sun was circling the Earth.. it doesn’t, does it?????