As explained by O’Reilly (2011) this evolved a former ‘over-hyped’ technology of web 1.0, one which was one-to-many flow of communication, reflecting that of more traditional media such as newspapers, where users were unable to create, edit, comment and participate freely with content.
This new emergence of web 2.0 also brought the search system of “folksonomy”, which challenged the traditional taxonomy directory, which allowed a collaborative system of categorisation, through tagging, annotating and social indexing, and a system which derives value through user participation.
This reflects the idea of the “long-tail” which can be seen to be opposite to the “mainstream”. This derives from a mass audience created through many niche audiences. As explained by Anderson (2004), web 2.0 has given the user the freedom to have access to a vast amount of content, suited to our own unique interests, free from the previous restricted content driven by economy, through content targeting the lowest common denominator.
This aspect is the most attractive to me, as many of my interests in relation to music, movies and overall reading content are rarely shown through mainstream media. I think all our interests can never be fully satisfied by mainstream media, thus new web 2.0 platform is a way of allowing all our various niche interests to be satisfied by these abundance of content. I know I don’t want to be stuck watching LA ink for tattoo related issues, watching MTV for my music content or stuck reading The Australian for news and political information… Hurray for web 2.0!
O'Reilly, T. (2005) 'What is Web 2.0' O'Reilly Media.[URL: http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html]
Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10 [URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html]
2 comments:
This idea of the "long tail" has shown me that people are now aware that mainstream isn't exactly the best. People talk and the niche markets are making a comeback. You're right in saying that Web 2.0 has given these niche markets an opportunity to succeed. This is the time for entrepreneurs to shine.
It's interesting that the long tail has always been there and is a naturally occurring phenomenon but we are only now seeing/able to utilise it through network technology like the internet. I guess you can discover tastes you didn't know you had! This would be infinite though because the more you look, the more you would discover. You would never be able to find 'everything' you like, you would just keep looking and finding new things, it would kind of be like approaching the speed of light!
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