Social what now?
Put simply, the technology we’re using is changing who we are as a society. The more
social networking sites pop up, the more we look for our social connections online, and desire to be constantly connected to the internet. And when we use collaborative websites like
Wikipedia and
Digg, we reinforce the desire to freely share our digital resources.
That might not seem as extreme as the terms “revolution” and “communism” imply, but there are big changes ahead. According to futurist
Mark Pesce, the
Social Revolution is predicted to see the rise of 24/7 mobile internet access, free sharing of all information online, and the eventual dissolution of copyright and patent laws.
The whacky world of wiki collaboration:
The world of wiki provides a great example of how the social revolution is taking place in your lounge room. The term “
wiki” comes from wiki-software–a kind of software that supports huge collaborative websites. The most well known of these is Wikipedia–a multi-lingal, not-for-profit encyclopedia which allows anyone to contribute or edit articles. This idea of information ‘owned by the people’ has become incredibly popular: the
Wikimedia Foundation runs
Wikiversity where education materials are contributed freely, and
Wikinews, where anyone can write articles or contribute to story leads. Collaborative journalism has become so popular that mainstream news organisations like the
New York Times have started their own collaborative projects.
There is even
Wikileaks, where people can anonymously publish government, corporate and religious documents not openly available to the public. Famous Wikileaks include the
Guantanamo Bay operations manual leak, the
secret blacklisted websites under Rudd’s internet filtering scheme, and Scientology documents regarding
Operation Snow White.
Is there a danger that these sites will be abused or publish incorrect information? Of course. But with millions of other internet users keeping contributors honest, fraudulent attempts don’t survive long. And the individual–or the community organisation–with information to share just got a whole lot more powerful.
Collaboration for the lazy:
Not all these new technological communalists are proactive types. Thanks to
social bookmarking, you can affect which stories people read without even writing them! The most well-known of the bookmarking sites is
Digg. Any member of the Digg website can submit a web story or news article to the group and then members vote on whether or not the article is important to them. Stories deemed “important” become more visible so more people read them. In this way, many obscure stories can find a much larger audience.
Another variation is
StumbleUpon, where users list their interests, and the site finds other websites that might interest the user. Articles and stories can be contributed, tagged and reviewed by users. Once a website has been contributed, it becomes one of the random sites offered to other users.
Such sites have created a user expectation–not only do they expect to be able to comment on content, they want to be able to rank it and spread it! And the makers of content are responding–webpages hoping to be contributed to the collectives are peppered with social bookmarking buttons.
What does this mean for me?
The social revolution abounds in free media and marketing opportunities. The whole structure of dot-communism means that any idea, any website–and any organisation can get world-wide coverage, as long as their ideas are innovative. Here are some of our suggestions:
1. People in an online space want more control of content.
When you develop websites or other internet tools, include comment functions, “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rankings, or
content management systems that allow users to contribute to your site.
2. If you’re really keen, try launching your own collaborative site.
You can do this by
downloading free wiki software. You’ll get a lot of web traffic and a base of people actively involved in your organisation–and you can bet they’ll be sending links to their friends! Remember you can’t just set up a collaborative site and leave it–you’ll need some moderators to check the content is appropriate.
3. Social bookmarking + Social networking = loads of free media!
When you have a new webpage, program or marketing campaign you’re particularly proud of, contribute it to a collective.
Tweet it, Digg it, add it to Stumble, and if people like what you’ve done, they’ll put in the hard yards to promote it for you. Ask your members and friends to help you up your rankings.
Predicting what will crank the collectivism engine can be tough, but innovations, cool uses of multimedia, stories of injustice, and random whacky humour tend to rank well. Check out today’s top ten stories at
http://digg.com for some inspiration!
