News ‘R’ us - recent changes in IM
Users create the news, they want to read…
O’Reilly Media coined the phrase Web 2.0 in 2004 to refer to a supposed second generation of internet based services that let people collaborate and share information online in perceived new ways — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and ?folksonomies?.
What are the ingredients of this Web 2.0?
- The Web as collaboration platform
- data as the driving force
- networking effects by an architecture of participation
- many to many publishing
- open source development
- business models enabled by content syndication
Also called the ?semantic? web, the two concepts complement each other. In summary the above mentionned ingredients create the perfect base for a semantic environment.
A social phenomenon evolved - the approach to creating & distributing web content by users, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority and the freedom to share and re-use. Content and information form a far more developed deeplinking web architecture.
Information clustering
The broad acceptance of blogs and the introduction of ?RSS? enforce the clustering of information. So-called ?blogrolls? connect blogs of similar topics …
What does this dramatic change in information management and communication dynamics mean for Search Consultants & Research Professionals?
To say it short - it raises the number of information sources to higher power.
Technorati, the leading blog search engine tracks more than 53 Mio. of such weblogs as per September 2006, covering USA mainly. One year ago, they counted 20 Mio.!
Blog Herald, the top news source for blogs estimates more than 35 Mio. blogs, giving a more detailed explanation about distribution by world regions in January 2006. On Blog Herald you also find new job profiles evolving like Social Bookmarkers, Social Coders, Chief Bloggers, Business Bloggers and more…
So, even if we consider, that half of all blogs are inactive, the numbers are still vertiginous.
In an article of October 2005 Blog Herald details estimation of blogs by country (including Asian and European) and by host, totalling appr. 100+ Mio.
Read more about Blogs, Forums & Groups under the appropriate category.