John Sack, director of Stanford’s Highwire Press recently speculated that we may be reaching a tipping point in the hype cycle of Web 2.0, where we’re actually starting to see some practical consideration and thoughtful critical analysis of these technologies, rather than the usual constant stream of evangelism and cheerleading. If so, it’s certainly welcome, and a few recent articles back up his viewpoint:
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Tara Brabazon, Professor of Media Studies from Brighton University recently wrote a blistering review of Clay Shirky’s very enthusiastic book on social networking, “Here Comes Everybody”. While Brabazon’s main point is the enormous number of people excluded from Shirky’s “everybody”, she hits the nail on the head on several of the negative aspects of Web 2.0. I particularly like her comments on the “digitised echo chamber”, the self-reinforcing nature of the blogosphere and social networks:
“Web 2.0 has become a warm and dark space for people with too much time and too few ideas. They are shielded through the flawed assumption that if more “people” (and as a visitor to Second Life, I use this word advisedly …) are involved in doing “something” then it becomes important. When we were at high school, this was called mob rule. Now it is called social networking….The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.”
David Silver, Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies at the University of San Francisco has an interesting historical perspective on the hype surrounding Web 2.0, essentially calling it the dot.com bubble in new clothing:
“These days, the obvious needs saying: Don’t believe corporate hype. Corporations exist to make profits, not public goods. Usually, when they say “community” they mean “commerce,” and when they say “aggregation” they mean “advertising.” Here in northern California, what were once dot.coms are now called Web 2.0 startups, but the goal remains the same: to make millions by selling out to Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft . From San Francisco to Silicon Valley, the newest gold rush is on, call it California Ideology 2.0, and hungry ghosts cover the city.”
And finally, the Science of the Invisible blog takes a stern look at Connotea. Glad to see I’m not the only one finding such services less than useful. He’s heading for CiteULike next week, but personally, I don’t see all that much difference between the two.
Bench Marks 
April 21, 2008 at 2:19 pm
If blogs are Web 2.0, then blog communities are most certainly not about making money. Overwhelmingly, people involved in blogging do it on their own time. The same applies with Wikipedia. Some people got rich out of Wikipedia, for sure, but that’s more of an accident.
As for the “long tail of proliferating mediocrity,” there are many “long tail” bloggers like myself who believe that they are producing higher and higher quality over time. My blog did not get less interesting over time. I do not buy it.
I believe it helped foster quality innovation in a small way.
April 21, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Hi Daniel,
I think the question of community sites with commercial backing versus voluntary sites that actually come from within a community is an interesting one. Right now, a lot of the higher profile Web 2.0 sites are coming from commercial entities, some from big publishing houses for example. Many come from individuals who see themselves as entrepreneurs, and their sites as potential profit centers for the future (with at least the prospect of selling out to a commercial entity if the site takes off). The people participating on these sites, the ones actually contributing the content, are, of course, not doing it for profit. But most of the sites themselves were created for profit, without a doubt. Which may prove problematic in the long run. There aren’t yet a lot of (or really, any) good business models for these types of sites. I posted a bit from Jacob Nielsen about how banner ads are not going to cut it here:
http://www.cshblogs.org/cshprotocols/2008/04/11/jacob-nielsen-on-web-20/
The question of corporations being behind supposed community websites has been discussed elsewhere, including here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/02/18/fister
It’s worth considering the forces behind a site before committing your blood, sweat and tears.
The long tail comment was, I believe a swipe at Chris Anderson from the original author, a sarcastic use of his “long-tail” theory:
http://www.thelongtail.com/
There’s no question that blogs improve over time. The act of writing a blog provides ample practice which leads to a higher skill level. The comment in this context is more the idea of the self-reflexive nature of the science blogosphere. I’ve talked about it in several posts already, bloggers blog about other bloggers who then leave comments on that blog and then respond with a blog post of their own about the other bloggers comment on their own blog. It creates this loop, this circular community, this self-reinforcing “digitised echo chamber”. It selects for community over quality, where being connected to more people is more important than having something important to say (or being skilled at saying it).
April 22, 2008 at 3:45 am
Well, it didn’t take a week, only a day:
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2008/04/social-bookmarking-for-life-scientists.html
I agree that there’s not much to choose between Connotea and CiteULike. Overall, my personal preference is for CiteULike, but in the above post, I argue that neither site is fit for purpose. But I do have a solution: PubMed needs to add social features.
April 22, 2008 at 12:48 pm
No surprise there AJ. I just don’t see the point of these referral sites. Adding a set of tags is time consuming and still not as effective as a good search engine. I’m also not convinced of the great benefit of social recommendations. Go look at what the top videos are on YouTube on any given day. Is that the level of advice we’re seeking for the scientific literature?
Also, thanks for the great link in your post to this paper, it’s definitely something to dig into:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.4142v2
April 22, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I love Highwire Press. Its greatest innovation is embodied in these words “This article has been cited by other articles:” References tell us of papers published before. Highwire Press gives us links to papers written after. Such reverse references are really useful when doing literature searches.
Hype is hype, especially when real money is involved. Monetizing these approaches will just not be an important aspect of what researchers want and use. But, as with the first uses of the Web, there are important aspects of the technologies that will be helpful to researchers. These approaches just may not make a lot of money for companies.
Social bookmarking sites were first used to make it easy to retrieve personal bookmarks from anywhere. It was useful to the individual. An emergent property, though, of these sites was that these bookmarks could become useful for others. I just do not see that same sort of process for these scientific reference sites. They do not seem to have the same usefulness.
Same with tagging. It is useful for a group but not usually for the individual. Thus, many people just do not tag items. No perceived benefit. You can read about a fascinating attempt/failure at constructing taxonomies at A Journey In Social Media. Web technologies have to be useful for people to use.
This is the ironic aspect of Web 2.0 and something so much of the hype seeks to overlook (‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’). Web 2.0 is about conversations and dialog. But without being useful to the individual, few conversations will be initiated.
April 23, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I am at the Web 2.0 Expo that O’Reilly is putting on in San Francisco. Clay Shirky will be talking later this afternoon on Here Comes Everybody. I have heard him before and I am not surprised that his new work is controversial. Any ideas of some good questions to ask?
April 23, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Just got back from Shirky’s talk. I’ll mention it more at my blog later tonight because he is a very engaging speaker. No slides. Just very different points of view that require you to alter your perspective.
Interestingly, he directly answered the ‘people with too much time’ meme. His point was that one of the huge changes in the recent 50 years is that everyone has too much time. It has, however, been spent watching TV and consuming. That is, there is a culture-wide cognitive surplus that, until recently, was filled by TV and consumerism.
Just as we had to get through My Mother the Car to finally see Battlestar Galactica, we may have to deal with some online crud. But that does not mean there are not many things of value online.
I’ll write more but on re-reading Brabazon’s article, I think she may be concentrating on something that was not at all the focus of Shirky’s book. If so, that is somewhat unfair. Or perhaps she found a blind spot in his discussions. But that may not invalidate anything he says. What her article and Shirky’s talk have accomplished is that I will have to read the book to figure it out for myself. Score another victory for consumerism 😉
April 23, 2008 at 10:57 pm
[…] There has been some discussion of Shirky’s new book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ at Bench Marks that invites some […]
April 24, 2008 at 10:58 am
Thanks for the summary of Shirky’s talk Richard. I can’t really say how much I agree with Brabazon’s comments on Shirky’s book until I finish reading it myself (I had bought a copy before coming across her review). I can say that I do think she hits the nail on the head as far as trying to address the overwhelming hype surrounding Web 2.0, and for the circular, self-reinforcing nature of the communities using these tools.
As for Shirky’s comments, is he really suggesting that we take our leisure time and apply it to doing more work? If I’m watching tv, it’s because I need a break and want to relax. It’s a passive activity, done in my down time. I work enough hours in the day without having to spend all my free time developing professional relationships and tools online.
April 24, 2008 at 1:28 pm
David,
I posted a really long reply at my blog so I don’t want to take up too much of your space. The basic message is that there are useful tools for scientists in these technologies. As researchers, we are used to ignoring hype and looking at the facts. Social media companies need the hype to make their incredible valuations stand up.
The Web was developed by scientists for scientists. We have some very difficult and complex problems to solve and these tools offer real promise for helping solve them.
Shirky was mostly attacking the ‘losers with too much time on their hands’ argument, not advocating that everyone jump on board. Many people are moving their leisure activities online but that does not mean TV is going anywhere.
April 24, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Now back some of the rest of your post.
Hype and echo chambers – Being at this Web 2.0 Expo is a similar exercise. But simply because 90% of the talks or discussion are fluff or hype does not negate that there are some very substantive conversations going on. The key is finding them.
Fltering is key. It is why I concentrate on bringing these tools inside the firewall. That by itself fliters out a lot of the crud making it easier to solve problems and create knowledge with these tools.
Connetea and CiteULike – could be useless but what is important in Web 2.0 approaches is to fail early and move towards perfection. Finding out what does not work is probably more important right now. Those organizations that can quickly move revisions through the pipeline, particularly in a way that is transparent to their community will ultimately be successful.
My money is that Nature will figure it out before Elsevier. Have you checked out 2collab? I have not found it a very useful filter.
April 25, 2008 at 8:17 am
Well said Richard, I appreciate your comments. I do think scientists are very good at filtering through the hype–that’s why so few of them are using any of the online Web 2.0 tools. The reasons I keep trying to temper the hype are 1) I often give talks to scientists on the subject, what tools are worth using (aka “don’t believe the hype”), and 2) as an editor at a relatively small, not-for-profit institute we can’t afford the sorts of failure that mark these enterprises. The Natures and Elseviers of the world have the funds to throw into something even if they expect it to fail. We can’t do that, and have to carefully pick and choose what technologies to invest our time and funds in, the sort of filtering you mention. It’s probably the main reason the big corporations are dominating this nascent space–they’re the only ones who can afford to do so.
I do get Shirky’s point about moving spare time online. It doesn’t really address the idea of social networks and such for professional, work-related matters. Sure, maybe you’ll play on Myspace or WOW in your leisure time instead of watching tv. But how does that translate to participation in scientific communication, blogs, etc? Most scientists I know are overbooked already in their work hours. If they’re expected to invest time in social networking, then that either means a reduction in research or cutting into their down time.
I have spent some time on 2collab, and agree it’s a distant third to Connotea and CiteULike. And I do think Nature is much more likely to crack the nut as it were, as they have some very smart people working for them, and seem willing to take chances.
April 25, 2008 at 8:52 am
David,
Great conversation. What is very obvious now is that, as usually happens, the thought of untold riches from a set of new tools has clouded the minds of many, many people. It is as though all anyone talked about were the Formula 1 racing cars, without realizing that pickup trucks was where the really disruptive effects would be see. The Innovator’s Dilemma discusses this in detail.
Facebook is a poor example of how these technologies are helpful for scientists. I look at it as similar to gossip. Lots of people do it and it can be fun but ultimately it is mostly noise. Same with most of what Shirky mentioned. It is really just play, just grooming other primates.
But get two researchers together and their form of discourse may look gossipy but often has a tremendous amount of information transfer and problem solving aspects to it. We are trying to find out the latest information, what happened at a conference, what was published in Blood the last week, why the experiment failed, how it succeeded, etc.
These are the sorts of conversations that I see these tools really enhancing. But these tools probably won’t look anything like Facebook. These tools will help us manipulate data in new and novel ways, harnessing the power of social networks to solve real problems. This is a much different emphasis then playing the latest widget on Facebook.
I don’t see that everyone will embrace these tools. Just as some people take notes with a pen and some with a computer, some will use a wiki and others will continue to use informal avenues. But I do believe that if properly implemented, these tools can save time for many scientists. Just as a first approximation, a fair amount of time spent emailing internal collaborators, having ad-hoc meetings, tracking down references in order to write a grant can be decreased by the collaborative nature of a wiki.
The key here is that the tools HAVE to be of almost immediate usefulness to the individual. It has to make our time more efficient and to have direct positive effects. Spending time on Facebook, or most of the media sites on the web, is no different than apes grooming each other. It has no other direct purpose. (Well, maybe to make millions for widget developers)
But a well implemented wiki or blog, particularly within an already established community such as a research organization, can have direct, time-saving effects on the individual. It is simply the emergent effects of the local social network that can leverage this into something very useful to the organization.
To my mind, the key here is that social media tools used WITHIN an organization will have very different uses and methodologies than those used OUTSIDE, in the wild. Most of the current discussions are with the outside aspects but I believe that the greatest long term impact of these tools, particularly for scientists, will be the inside aspects.
April 25, 2008 at 9:05 am
David,
One more thing. You are sitting right in the middle of the phase shift being brought on by disruptive technology. Scientific publishing even five years from now will be very different than today. Scary for some but the best times to have real impacts in the world are when things are shifting.
So even engaging a community with a simple blog can be a potent tool. Good conversations are the key.
I really enjoy your blog and it has led me to aggregate not only the feed for Bench Marks but also for CSH Protocols. I just wish you had more time to post. I like your point of view.
April 27, 2008 at 5:06 pm
A transcript of Shirky’s talk is now online here:
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
And there’s a spirited discussion going on over at BoingBoing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/27/death-of-the-sitcom.html#comments
Now that I’ve read it, it’s a weaker argument than I imagined. It basically comes off like a cliched “kill your television” rant that could have been written any time in the last 50 years. Hey kids, tv is a waste, go outside and fly a kite! Television is not the issue here. Before there was television, people still liked to relax in their spare time. They listened to the radio, went to movies, read books, sang songs, etc. They didn’t spend their time working. He uses the example of playing WOW. The key word there is “playing”, not “working”. Editing a wikipedia article is work. Writing a blog is work. I don’t see Joe Average coming home from the steel mill, cracking open a beer and then fixing typos in wiki articles to relax. Some people do find such things fun. As Jimbo Wales often points out, the majority of the work on Wikipedia is done by around 500 people total. Those people seem to get off on the process, on the rules of Wikipedia (to me that’s one of Wikipedia’s great problems, to those who do the most work, the process is more important than the content or the accuracy of what’s produced).
The one part of his argument I do buy is the sheer numbers. Although it’s a tiny, tiny minority, there are probably more than 500 people who would get off on enforcing the rules of Wikipedia or some such activity. So over time, I do expect to see more participation. But no, I don’t expect to see television disappear, and no, I don’t expect to see leisure time suddenly become community effort time. And that does not bode well for professional social networking projects. If you’re asking people to participate because it’s a fun way to spend their spare time, they’re probably not going to work on projects that are what they do all day at work.
Oh, and the irony of it all is that if you took away the television programs he decries, you’d lose the subject matter of 90% of the online projects he’s promoting. No TV means no Picard versus Kirk arguments, after all.
April 28, 2008 at 4:19 am
[…] Web 2.0 is David Crotty, author of the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols blog “Benchmarks.” In a recent post, he pointed me to a review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody,” in which Tara […]
April 28, 2008 at 9:08 am
One of the very interesting aspects of the Web 2.0 discussion in the VC world (i.e. Bubbleland) is that almost all the money is being invested in these sorts of leisure social media sites because the money from advertising, etc. is geared that way. Huge amounts of money are being thrown around for things that are faddish in nature.
But this is not a feature of the technology. Just how it is being used right now.
Facebook, Flickr etc. all are really for play (although there are some interesting experiments for corporations) and the money that follows them is not much different than that which funds Superbowls or TV.
So, not surprisingly, most of the conversation deals with things that I find ephemeral, even if they account for a large part of our consumer society. It is as though everyone want to be the digital equivalent of Tickle Me Elmo or a Cabbage Patch Kid – the latest fad.
That is not where these tools will have their biggest impact. It is their ability to leverage human filtering processes, permitting much larger amounts of data to be examined, more information to be distributed and more knowledge to be created.
I have seen first-hand how these tools can help researchers solve difficult problems. They have permitted me to overcome barriers that would have taken months to solve if at all.
Properly used, human social networks and these digital tools can disperse information widely, putting it in the hands of people who can use it. In research, they are simply a means to an end. Out in Bubbleland, they are the end.
April 28, 2008 at 9:31 am
That’s the point I’ve been trying to make when I give talks to publishers–scientists want tools that make them more efficient, not tools that demand more time. There’s incredible potential here, in things like mashups, to take complex, enormous amounts of data and visualize them in a quickly understood manner. That’s what we need from Web 2.0, not just another site set up so you can chat online and “find collaborators”.
April 30, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Just thought you might like to see the video of Shirky’s talk. It is up at blip.tv, as are a lot of the other Web 2.0 talks but I liked this one embedded in an interesting blog that generated a lot of comments, many along the lines we have discussed but also some from generally more mainstream people.
Making Light
August 14, 2008 at 5:11 am
[…] derived from their Science Direct user database. The results may be surprising, especially given some recent thinking about the utility of social media in […]