[LINK] Re: Social computing for government and business

[Tom Worthington]

At 08:53 AM 30/07/2007, I wrote:
>... On Monday, Roger Clarke will argue at the ANU that Web 2.0 is a 
>valid area for formal research 
><http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/researching-web-20.html>. ...

Roger made a good case that something in Web 2.0 was worth 
researching, even if it was just working out if Web 2.0 is actually 
anything.  ;-)

An earlier version of his notes are at 
<http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Web2C.html>. There are 
also slides, but they are 5Mbytes 
<http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Web2C.ppt>.

Linkers will have seen this work evolve, with a number of requests 
for input and comment. Early on I commented that Web 2.0 was the same 
as AJAX and the talk was useful in correcting that misconception.

It was be easy to dismiss Web 2.0 as just a marketing gimmick, but 
even if so it is a very effective marking gimmick. Therefore those 
involved in delivering and researching systems need to be able to 
talk intelligently about it (even if just to say it isn't anything). 
One aspect of this is that Web 2.0 is very much about commercial use 
of the web and this colors all discussion of it.

Roger's search showed few genuine academic citations exist about Web 
2.0. This would therefore seem a fruitful areas for research 
proposals. He first summarized Web 1, as an aggregation of technology 
for e-commerce and the like, without a formal architecture.

Web 2 is a marketing driven drive for something, but it is not clear 
what (more of a feeling that a strict distinction). One aspect is 
addressing the "long tail": exploiting the low volume business with 
low cost online services.

Some aspects: Syndication (as in RSS), Advertising Syndication (I 
suspect per click models might have had their day). Participation (as 
in Wikipedia), Collaboration (as in Wikipedia), and Tagging. One 
interesting aspect is that companies can induce customers to provide 
some of their customer support, in the form of produce reviews, 
support and FAQs. It occurred to me that this was the equivalent of 
the telephone support line putting you into a conference call with 
the other customers, and recorded message saying "sort it out yourself".  ;-)

The new trendy area of the web is social networking and its 
application to business. As I found out only last week, the trendy 
new buzzword for this is "Enterprise 2" 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/social-computing-for-government-and.html>. 
To find out exactly what that is, if anything, we will need to wait 
for another seminar.

Roger's next seminar at the ANU is "Big Brother Google?", 27 August 
2007 <http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/showone.pl?SID=474>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
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