Today, Web 2.0 technology just may be passing from the “cool kid’ phase to the business-to-business phase. ~
Webware.com is reporting on the Web 2.0 Expo in New York with coverage of the change in tone and tenor of conference towards profit minded business tactics. At the same conference Tim O’Reilly stood on stage earlier this week to chastize the online community for focusing on the wrong problems.
“Stop throwing sheep and do something worthy” ~Tim O’Reilly
Meanwhile, ReadWriteWeb is talking about the effects of the credit crisis to online business in the valley, forcing some uncharacteristic introspection.
It seems to me that our industry is being called out on the carpet for its cavalier attitude towards the world surrounding our snow globe. The media is looking out over our heralded accomplishments and wondering how they are helping solve the bigger problems. As quickly as they were to laud accolades at our feet, they have turned a critical eye to our creations. I’m only disappointed it took such dire circumstances to shift the focus back towards the people who need our help most.
While the world may not need another social news aggregator or user generated photo disbursement site, it sure as heck can use our ingenuity. There are economic problems, communication problems, logistic problems, translation problems, analysis problems, coordination problems, deployment problems and social science problems that people are working to solve with online tools. Great accomplishments are happening in academia, government and the private sector, though few were likely to hear about them before now. That may soon be changing if, believing Jim’s quote earlier to be accurate, we are passing into the business to business phase of our evolution. Attention can help motivate people towards great innovations, as I believe President Kennedy understood all too well in 1961.
For our small part I think Sazbean can do better at delivering information on the potential of online technology for social change. It will be a small thing, but the only things that didn’t start out small are those that never started at all.
photo attributed to aussiegall @ flickr CC