David Beisel’s Perspective on Digital Change
The People’s Internet(?)
With all of the innovation of Web 2.0, I am a little worried about the usability and consumer-friendliness of it. Yes, blogging can be the most straightforward way to publish on the net and vertical search engines make things like looking for a job easy.
There are a lot of activities, though, which just aren’t that user-friendly – at least not yet. Does a non-techie like my aunt understand what it means to tag content, let alone want to do it? Is registering for so many social networking sites helping me connect or wasting my time? Why is it that subscribing to RSS feeds often really isn’t simple?
One of the rotating quotes on the Web 2.0 conference website is from Jeff Bezos, “Web 1.0 was making the Internet for people, Web 2.0 is making the Internet better for computers.” Really? Is that good? I think the Internet should be for people.
With all of the innovation of Web 2.0, I am a little worried about the usability and consumer-friendliness of it. Yes, blogging can be the most straightforward way to publish on the net and vertical search engines make things like looking for a job easy.
There are a lot of activities, though, which just aren’t that user-friendly – at least not yet. Does a non-techie like my aunt understand what it means to tag content, let alone want to do it? Is registering for so many social networking sites helping me connect or wasting my time? Why is it that subscribing to RSS feeds often really isn’t simple?
One of the rotating quotes on the Web 2.0 conference website is from Jeff Bezos, “Web 1.0 was making the Internet for people, Web 2.0 is making the Internet better for computers.” Really? Is that good? I think the Internet should be for people.