Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Web 2 point Ohhhhh

Check me out...posting two days in a row!

So I mentioned Google Reader in my exceedingly long rant from yesterday. I actually wanted to talk more about it, but since I was mainly focusing on ranting, I left out some cool things I've finally come to realize about this whole Web 2.0 thing.

So I've only been using Google Reader regularly for a couple of weeks now. As I mentioned yesterday, the main thing for me is finding an easy way to keep up with the multitude of blogs that I like. Generally, each has at least one thing a day which is interesting and so I like to go to each one on a daily basis. Having everything in one place with an easy way to mark each as read or unread (just like email) means I spend less time scrolling and more time reading interesting things.

So up until now, it was really just a way for me to speed read through blogs. The interface was fine to help me through that, but the Web 2.0 nature of it didn't really hit me until today. And what exactly is the Web 2.0 nature of it?

The collaboration & sharing aspects. Until now, whenever I read something cool or interesting, I email friends as one-offs. Or if a blog is consistently interesting, I tell people about the URL. And that was the extent of it.

But today I just shared my first set of blogs. Check it out:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/17433403963146537835/label/02-photo

So this is obviously a photo related set of blogs, but the cool thing about it is that I can quickly share out this stuff to my business partner so he can read things and keep up with the same type of things as me without having to do anything more than bookmark the link above. Or better yet, just add it as a feed into his own news reader.

Okay, okay, I know that sounds pretty lame and pretty geeky, but the whole idea of spreading information like this is so cool. Ya, the stuff I've shared above is all about photography, but what if it was about "green" technology? What if it was about the elections. The idea is that I can quickly share a base of knowledge with people. Not just so they can read the same things I read, but so we can all be informed as a community. And assuming they trust my intellect, they'll find utility in reading (or skimming through) the things I keep track of.

As John Chambers just said yesterday...
"...our communications and collaboration technologies are enabling the second phase of the Internet, or Web 2.0, which is redefining how people, companies and countries collaborate in ways never before realized."


What really excites me is the power of this all. Sure, what I've shared is limited and pretty specific, but as I mentioned above, simple things like this can really take us places. It's beyond a list of links, it's spreading knowledge around so that everyone can benefit and improve society as a whole.

As with that, I'll leave you with a visual on the power of what we're dealing with...


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