Finally adapting to Web 2.0
By Andy Denton on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 12:11 am
2006 (heck, 2005 for that matter) was the year for Web 2.0. This term refers to the rush of services moving online, as well as to the social aspects. So, sites like del.icio.us, myspace, flickr, start pages and services like Google Calendar are all good examples of web 2.0 type of services.
I’ve resisted this trend for a long while. Friends of mine convinced me to make a Myspace page last year. That experiment lasted just over one month. (I thought it was a waste of time. I mean, if you want to say hello or want to send me a stupid picture, just email it to me!) I read about Yahoo’s acquisition of del.icio.us last year, I was amazed. Why would anyone want to keep their bookmarks online? Why would you want to share your bookmarks? IE stores my bookmarks very nicely, thanks. And I don’t jump from computer to computer desperately wanting a central depository for my bookmarks. I have one computer, and that’s where I expect my bookmarks to be.
Then, there’s flickr. Flickr is a social photo sharing site. You post your photos. You can set them as public or private. And for those you let access your portfolio of pics, each visitor can comment on your snapshots. Users have a profile, and they can leave comments saying “cool!”, “nice pic”, or whatever. I didn’t get it. I still don’t get it to a point. It seems somewhat of a waste of time.
But, something has changed to where I am slowly becoming Web-2.0-ified. The main reason is the existence of this blog. Blogs are part of this 2.0 phenomenon. User generated content is what it’s all about. Along with my entries, people like you come to this blog and read my posts. And each one of you has the opportunity to reply and interact. This creates stickiness.
In addition to the blog, my position of developer of Realty.com and it’s properties requires me to recognize trends and to stay ontop of the happening of the web. This used to be easy. Up to a year ago, I subscribed to Wired and Business 2.0 magazines, and read about 4 tech websites daily to keep up on real esate and the web’s activities. Now, the number of must-read resources have expanded and I simply can’t keep up.
The number of websites I want to earmark are so numerous, that if I bookmarked them all within my browser my bookmarks wouldn’t be useful. I keep my bookmarks for certain topic, and limited use. But, for those other sites I simply want to ensure to note, I now tag them in ma.gnolia. Ma.gnolia is a geat bookmarking service with all the bells and whistles of it’s competitors. They make it very easy for you to store, search, and share all your web clippings.
To cut down on browsing web page after web page, I was using the FeedDemon RSS reader. I really like FeedDemon, but it too has become a burden. It still takes me too long to scan headlines. And recently, FeedDemon is randomly shutting down in the middle of tasks. It apparently is corrupting with interaction with some other program on my computer. I can’t figure it out.
So, to solve my RSS headline scanning needs, I am not sold on start pages. The best start pages that I have found are SnapURLs and OriginalSignal. With these two sites alone, I’m able to monitor all the web’s golden feeds in a very short amount of time. This activity probably takes 5 minutes or less. In addition to these start pages, but much less frequently, I also use and monitor the headlines on Digg.
As a bit of web indulgence (guilty pleasure), I now have started to keep an eye on Digg’s video page, as well as those from Tailrank and Megite.
If this wasn’t enough, I also have become a Google junkie. I’m now an active user of Google Reader, Calendar, Gmail, and have customized my Google home page.
I think you can say that I’m now officially a Web 2.0 convert.
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