Summary
Yahoo! Inc.'s vice-president, Eckart Walther, insists that the growing number of chat-rooms, computer games, dating services and blogs just goes to show the power of the web emerging to re-imagine the possibilities of social networks online.
Original source:
http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952401.htm
Details
By the millions, they're gathering and disseminating their own news with blogs and podcasts, creating customized article and photo feeds from their favorite sites and even annotating them with helpful text tags that others can search for on the Web site del.icio.us.
Ditto at Cyworld, which claims almost a third of South Korea's 48 million people as members.
As Mayfield noted in a recent blog post, "They Google (GOOG), Flickr, blog, contribute to Wikipedia, Socialtext it, Meetup, post, subscribe, feed, annotate, and above all share.
Harnessing Change This potent new do-it-yourself trend is shaking up a raft of industries, from software and telecommunications to media, marketing, and entertainment.
In the process, they're challenging the way media organizations cover and distribute news and entertainment, the way advertisers target pitches at them, and the way tech companies design and sell their products and services.
The new imperatives of Web 2.0, as many call it, will present challenges not only for Web giants such as eBay (EBAY), Yahoo, and Google but for some of mainstream tech's biggest leaders as well.
That's because these new Web services are rapidly erasing the line between the Web and desktop software.
"Applications are no longer software artifacts," notes Net pioneer Tim O'Reilly, CEO of tech publisher O'Reilly Media Inc. "They're ongoing services."
The nimblest ones are already harnessing their customers' expertise, open source software-style.
If you can use the Web to find exactly the service, article, video, or podcast you want -- and maybe even create it yourself, or with friends -- who needs networks or newspapers or (gulp) magazines?
Says Siva Kumar, president of the shopping search engine FatLens: "Where one site starts and another ends will increasingly be seamless."
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher, author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams launched TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams' personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org
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Sunday, October 23, 2005
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