Monday, October 03, 2005

Quick update on the O'Reilly web 2.0 piece. One thing missing : the blogroll. While O'Reilly definitely gets TheFlowInternet and the importance of RSS when he talks about blogs, he doesn't mention the importance of the blogroll as the other important factor in weaving together the blogosphere as social network.

In fact web 2.0 doesn't mention Friendster, Tribe or Orkut at all. Are social networking sites dead? Perhaps a case can be made that they're the last gasp of web 1.0 with their centralized databases, somehow failing to make the magic of web 2.0 work? Particularly Friendster with it's dumb, old-fashioned attitudes (no fakesters, firing bloggers) etc.

What's the web 2.0 role for YASNS? Or are they going to be eaten alive by a swarm of niche FOAF applications?

The blogroll was the original "wear your social network in public" phenomenon. Is it the original FOAF? Like FOAF, the blogroll was distributed rather than centralized. And available to anyone to read. What does the formal, RDFness of FOAF do that the blogroll didn't? What can FOAF apps learn from the blogroll?

1 comment:

Composing said...

I know. (I'm English too.)

Nevertheless, I like the term - its derivation is from the American slang "logrolling". I'm so used to it I never notice the bog-roll connection; though my mother, who's explaining some of this stuff to the University of the Third Age, says her students found it hilarious.

I think the word "blog" is much uglier ... and everyone got used to that.

ps : yep, a lot of Phil Joneses. But today I'm number two on Google! Result!