Thursday, October 15, 2015

Cornelissen Chapter 14: Web 2.0

…..Web 2.0: for when you have to communicate something so horrifically racist and ignorant, and you have to do it now…..then double down on it later.

Cornelissen’s outline of the progression of web technologies and how communicative practices have changed on various web platforms is a vanilla rehashing of the popular narrative.

While I am comfortable with the terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in certain contexts, Cornelissen again paints with too broad of a brush when defining these terms. I think Cornelissen’s decision to define Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in the manner he does is because the definitions are accurate for organizations and corporations, which makes sense. For individuals, these definitions are lacking. From its nascence, the Web has been a digital space “where content and applications are continuously generated and modified,” but, in its early days, this continuous collaboration was not performed by “all users.” As early as the 1980’s, only small groups of people were networking through platforms like LISTSERV and bulletin board services. Networking has always been present on the web. Also, while there has indeed been an explosion of networking and collaboration on the web, it is absolutely wrong to assert that “all users” are taking advantage of this. There are still users who are in Web 1.0 mode. There are a host of social factors which determine how individuals approach and use the features of the internet. To assert that “all users” are using it any fashion is far too broad.


The Nestle case study illustrates what I find interesting about this shift in web use: how horribly mismanaged corporate social marketing is. Nestle’s Facebook interactions are similar to the misstep many other organizations and corporations make. When engaging in social marketing, it is much more difficult to manage the message. 

4 comments:

  1. I think you are correct in saying that there are many people that are still in the Web 1.0 format and have yet to make the jump, or are incapable due to access restrictions. However, I think that users outside of the US, i.e. Asia, Europe, Africa etc. have access to cheaper mobile connectivity, which is leading to a conversion to Web 2.0 formats at a faster rate than imagined.

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  2. I think you are correct in saying that there are many people that are still in the Web 1.0 format and have yet to make the jump, or are incapable due to access restrictions. However, I think that users outside of the US, i.e. Asia, Europe, Africa etc. have access to cheaper mobile connectivity, which is leading to a conversion to Web 2.0 formats at a faster rate than imagined.

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  3. Wow. I hadn't seen his follow up Tweet. That's amazing in a soulless, pointed-white-hat-dress-code-for-the-meetings kind of way.

    Why do you think it's so difficult to manage the message? I had my own snafu this weekend, and I think it can really be a matter of the pace of online communication. We have the world at our finger tips, and when we screw up, there's virtually no built in time to think better of our potentially problematic communications. I wonder how many of our online mistakes are attributable to this quick paced communication system we've got now.

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  4. It's because we're in such a hurry, I think. We post something without reading it over. We say whatever we think without considering its effect. We're in a rush to participate but then don't participate responsibly. We do similar things in real life, but in real life we have the advantage of immediate feedback through facial expressions and body language. Of course, that doesn't always stop some people.

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