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Web 2.Oh. . .really?

A Skeptical Look at Emerging Web Technologies, by Craig Stoltz

Disproof of Concept: Change.org’s Ideas for ChangeJanuary 6

Change.org is a social network where people who care about a variety of causes–global warming, hunger, gay rights, animal rights, worker rights and a bewildering range of others–find kindred spirits, action groups and all sorts of information. It also accepts donations on behalf of the non-profits in its network.

As a platform to help people connect and collaborate, it’s a classic–and admirable–use of social media.

The group’s Ideas for Change campaign, however, is another story. It’s a ripe demonstration of what happens when a “wisdom of the crowds” effort is overtaken by activists whose real agenda is self-promotion, not the public interest.

Here’s how Ideas for Change works: The site invited users to suggest ideas for change [over 7,700 submissions] which were then reduced [via over 280,000 votes] to a “short” list of 90. In round two, each site visitor is allowed 10 votes to distribute among the causes he or she feels most important. The final list of Top 10 causes will be “delivered” to the Obama Administration and Congress via a press conference at the National Press Club.

I suspect you know where this is heading.

As of

5 Reasons to Celebrate Ads on A1 of the NYTimesJanuary 5

1. A “pure” front page with no ads is a Potemkin Village of journalistic purity, not the real thing. Reporters have always written on the back of advertisements. Car dealers and mattress stores funded Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate reportage. Nothing wrong with that. Allowing ads on the front page simply makes the newspaper’s fundamentally commercial nature transparent.

2. Since more people read the news online now than on pulp-and-petrol, they’re now used to seeing ads next to “front page” stories. Today’s NYTimes.com’s masthead appeared between two ears promoting Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, Air France flights and Holland America cruises, among others. Nobody got hurt.

3. Paul Krugman is still disruptively brilliant. Bill Kristol is still trying to figure out how to climb out of the hole he dug for himself as a Bush apologist. An ad stripped along the bottom of the front page will not alter these facts.

4. It makes pla

Print ‘n’ Read Feature: e-Hail to the ChiefJanuary 2

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post has been providing some of the best, most persistent coverage of the use of digital media by the presidential candidates all year.

And now he’s written a big where-we’ve-been/where-Obama-goes-from here piece. Like so much important writing about technologies, e-Hail to the Chief is a lousy read on the web. And so it is my first Print ‘n’ Read ™ feature of 2009, a distinction I assign to articles about technology so valuable they are actually worth printing out on paper and reading away from the computer.

The major theme is how hard it’s going to be for Obama to use the digital media that helped get him into office to carry out the duties of that office. [I've whacked this particular mole-head many times in this blog.]

Highlights include comments from Google’s Eric Schmidt and Al Gore about the messiness of digital democracy when people don’t like what the President is doing–and organize against the very guy they supported. [Am I the only one who didn't know Gore is a "senior adviser" to Google?]

But my favorite part comes at the end, where Vargas witnesses one of the “house meetings” that the transition team’s digital wing is organizing via the web to try to make use of the hunger for civic participation the

100-Percent-Guaranteed Technology Predictions for 2009January 1

Everybody issues predictions this time of year. The only difference is that mine are backed by a money-back guarantee that they will occur on the precise dates indicated.

In other words, you can take these 2009 technology predictions to the bank.

Oh, wait. . .you don’t want to put anything in the bank this year. Instead, just keep me honest by transferring these dates to your Outlook calendar so you can keep track throughout the year.

Jan 15: The GOP, determined to get serious about new technologies this year, sends out a blistering fundraising e-mail decrying “the tragic failures of the Obama Administration and the liberal elites.” The e-mail is recalled when an RNC staffer discovers the Obama Administration does not begin for five days.

Jan 20: So many people simultaneously send mobile phone pictures during the historic inauguration of Barack Obama that cell towers along the entire Eastern Seaboard ignite, creating the President’s first domestic crisis.

Feb 3: Apple unveils the revolutionary iShorts, a pair of wireless, GPS-enabled underpants that plays music, provides directions, offers dating recommendations and monitors urine levels. It is available to AT&T customers only.

Feb 10: The GOP, determined to get serious about new technologies this year, sends an intern to Best Buy “to get us a bunch of really fast computers.” Only after the equipme

In 2009, Social Media Will Be So OverDecember 30 2008

Back in my callow youth, in 1996, I was reporting on an “online travel” technology conference for the Washington Post. It focused on the breathtaking development that the Internet would soon let people actually purchase airline tickets and hotel visits online, without a travel agent or even a phone call!

It was heady stuff during a period when Windows 95 was a bug-riddled juggernaut and connection speeds were measured in “baud.” Brains were abuzz.

But I vividly recall one of the panelists saying something like this:

No offense to the conference organizers, but in five years there will be no “online travel.” The Internet will be fully integrated into commercial transactions and the term “online travel business” won’t mean anything different from “travel business.”

I think of this often as it applies to social media. I think by the end of 2009 what we now call “social media” will start to become just “media.”

The capacity for people to interact and collaborate with each other online–using social networks, instant message platforms, content sharing sites, ratings and recommendations tools, self-publishing communities and so forth–is becoming so commonplace that the concept of “social media” as a distinct entity soon will have lost its meaning. It’ll just become part of what people mean when they say “media.”

We’re already getting close.

Just about ever