The Social Web

[Image removed]I mentioned briefly a few days ago that I would start making posts in the Social Web category on this blog. This is part of what I’m doing for my English Writing class this semester, which is focused on exploring new media for communications.

What better topic to explore within that than the way people are making social links online?

So what do I mean by “social web?” I’m playing fast and loose with a term that, frankly, has very little definition to begin with. I think that gives me a little freedom to define it myself, and make it what I want it to be.

Social Web refers to a bit of what some audacious people have started calling “web 3” and “web 4” - what, you though we were still on web 2? I bet you still read Scoble (you should).

The idea is that the internet is really just a bunch of pages stuck together by hyperlinks, which is something so old and boring that it might as well be Fortran. But it’s still called the “Blogosphere,” and people still call it a “conversation,” and we make “friends” and we “network” via Facebook or Myspace or (if you’re over 30) Friendster.

That fascinates me. That all there is holding this whole thing together is little “links,” and that nobody has come up with a better idea or has even really evolved the concept (except possibly MyBlogLog, which is one of the fastest growing and coolest new services out there, as I said a few months ago on the Blog Business Summit blog).

So that’s what this madness is about. Expect musings, podcasts, videos, and utter gibberish. Enjoy.