· What has happened in the last 5 years in the field you are writing about?



We have seen the creation of new types of internet based services that rely on the common knowledge of thousands of people around the world. Users of these services usually benefit of increased information, which in turn gives them access to more and better opportunities

There has been a sudden increase in of these services

* social bookmarking and

* collaborative projects,

both, to be exploited commercially and through non-profit foundations

What is happening right now?

A growing number of internet users are becoming familiar with the technologies, its uses, advantages and the difference between different services.

There is a powerful incentive for new users to visit the websites of the established players, based in the snowball effect of their popularity and visibility, mainly within the internet itself.

Most of these users will never know if/that an alternate, better service existed elsewhere. The bulk of users will try at the most, three similar websites in the same category.

We are seeing a fierce competition among new coming services, and the arrival of new ones that promise, based on an allegedly better use of technology, to be better than similar systems already in place.

Some websites are said to have even offered to pay US$1000 a month to lure top users away from one of the most popular collaborative intelligence websites.

We are also seeing the relatively new phenomena of an increased portion of revenues generated by advertising and other mediums, being reverted back to the user.

What will happen in the next 5 years?

The current trends seem deemed to continue until only some of the major players on each category (e.g. Slashdot and Digg) remain, taking up most of the traffic for that kind of service.

We shall also assist to the rise of different local based services, like Meneame in Spain which shadows the popularity of the main international players, at a local level. Research proves that users prefer these type of services in their local language.

The next 5 years will see the evolution and consolidation of the main players in every market, through companies that may or may not be local language versions of the most popular international site for that category, since some of the biggest players in these markets today don’t seem too inclined to leave the American soil to fight for foreign audiences.

We shall also assist to the disappearance of some of these services in the US, but the attractiveness of foreign markets will grow as the American market becomes saturated.

Another interesting trend is the reverting of profits back to the user. As consumers get more internet savvy and learn that good traffic means advertising profits, they are increasingly demanding the share in the businesses they help to create, and provide content for.

I think that this trend is set to continue and services who don’t offer an increasing portion of their revenues to their users, will see the customer base eroded in a mater of weeks.

What will happen in the future, between 5 to 25 years from now?

Should the current trends continue, social bookmarking websites will follow a slightly different destiny to collaborative websites.

With social bookmarking websites, we may see the market narrowing, each of the companies becoming more specialized sites dealing with particular fields of interests (e.g. engineering bookmarks, scuba diving) and being sold to bigger companies or search engines to complement other services offered by them, or being absorbed by wiki projects.

With collaborative websites, we may see many disappearing much faster, as they are not able to attract the high number of contributors that they need to keep the project alive. The most successful of these websites may well also end up being acquired by some of the biggest internet players.

As the cost of entry gets higher, there may be less chances for small companies to start similar projects on a shoestring. (Digg.com is said to have been started on US$ 200)

What are the social implications of these future changes?

As outlined in the last part of this article, the social implications of these changes in consumer behaviour are profound.

As consumers pool their common knowledge in unified databases and open services, there is a much wider flow of information in the market, and this allows the consumer to make better choices, save money, access to supposedly better (recommended) services, and spread knowledge at a rate never seen before.

Collaborative future websites in which users are paid have the potential to make hundreds of people wealthy, the more they contribute to the success of the company. These people may not ever have had the access to this kind of economical opportunity should these services not exist.

What are the future business opportunities you envision in these changes?

Any individual with a good idea today, where the costs of entry are still relatively low and the big players are “busy" with much bigger projects, may still have a chance to create and develop a service with a user base big enough to eventually either stay on his own, or sell the business to a bigger competitor. Today, the big internet players prefer to let these sort of projects and business develop on their own before buying them (e.g. youtTube, sold for US$ 1.65 Billion)

Your comment and opinion on these trends. The future as you see it.

Who started it? Was it Digg, youtTube, Wikipedia, Delicious? No one really knows it, but what is certain is that the rise of collaborative websites and social bookmarking is just beginning, and is here to stay.

What started as an exercise on allowing participation in information systems in order to squeeze the most value out of them, has permeated into each and every layer of society. And this trend is now is reaching the corporate global world at staggering speed, and shaping the future of user’s interaction with the internet. And most of it is brought by a new generation of entrepreneurs. And they think very differently.

The new mindset brought by the new generations can be clearly seen on the Trendirama.com website (or The Rival Project, where, at the time of writing, unlike Trendirama, every single decision is polled among users, down to the direction and dimension of the project itself) (!). The motivation to engage in these communities goes from a desire to participate in open systems helping others and making money at the same time, to a seemingly clueless lack of direction and an idealism that borders on the surreal. So the question then is: can idealism alone fuel the fire of effective work collaboration towards a common goal?

Only the future will tell.

In any case, The new generations have a great thing in their favour. They grew in a world of great and rapid advances in all sectors of society. The phrase “Everything is possible" is naturally ingrained in their minds. And that alone, is a strong reason to be optimistic about the future. (unfortunately, another deeply rooted common thought is “I want to be rich and famous")

However, they also face massive challenges: a notorious lack of historical perspective and technical understanding of economic systems, a general disinterest in all things political and a rather short concentration span may limit their choices and hamper their growth. Their infatuation with the rich and famous may also delay or frustrate the best use of their skills, in their most productive years.

Many today are choosing to try their luck in the show business, where in spite of the “anyone can do it" image that the media so insistently conveys, only a handful of individuals attain that level of popularity, for an increasingly short period of time. Fan clubs were among the internet pioneers regarding collaborative websites.

Thus, there is a crucial lesson to be learnt here. Collaborative systems empower individuals. But if the user/producer of content collaborates just for the sake of it, without a realistic, attainable and productive goal in mind, the biggest advantage for the common good of these systems is lost.

Is that happening right now?

The popularity of video upload websites, where everyone can try their luck at “being famous", against the appeal of, say, the Open University website, prove otherwise. After all, Paris Hilton was the most sought after person on search engines in 2006…

Another issue to bear in mind, is that collaborative systems also rest under pillars that may not be as stable as they seem.

Participation is all very well..but if everyone is allowed an equal voice, will anything ever be accomplished on time? There is a time for generating ideas, and there is a time to implement them.

The new generations may be great idea generators, but once the item or service brainstormed is at the production stage, other skills are needed to complete the job, or, in the case of these web services, keep it afloat and the users interested, coming back for more. Any system that fails to comply with each stage of the production process, will inevitably fail.

Are today’s internet star websites that were created by a bunch of young students ready to stay around in the long haul? Can they stand the storm in the form of increased competition? Could they do it all over again tomorrow?

Initiating things is great. And benefiting from the inertia of new collaborative systems that multiply the effect of an idea in mere days, is even better. But…

I always remember my father’s words: “I am glad that you are able to produce so many great ideas, what I am concerned about is your not having the money to buy the bus ticket and see those who can make those ideas a reality."

Will the coming generations be able to afford that bus ticket?

“But that’s the greatness of collaboration! We’ll all do it together" some will say.

But much as I would like to believe it, I cannot.

Do not this kind of organizations oppose the very nature of the human mind? Can a system truly evolve and thrive without a clearly defined objective and hierarchies? Won’t these hierarchies appear, corroding the very egalitarian nature of the systems from within? (Wikipedia?) Can a generation change millions of years of human (non) evolution where our organizational systems have changed little?

I would dare to say it cannot.

Besides, I am not very old, but old enough to know that we have seen this kind of supposedly revolutionary times before. We have seen it with tulips in the Netherlands, with shares in the years previous to the stock market crash of ‘29, and in the years leading to the last dotcom crash. And we all know the results. The system tends to level itself out at one point, and hardcore idealists are brought back to reality, at least for a moment.

A great deal of good can be reaped from collaboration, peer rating and social bookmarking. And it is even better when the latest technology is used like never before in the pursuit of a more balanced and economically viable world. All the technological advances that we are witnessing and that will come are all very interesting, and yes, they certainly look nice. I am all up for them.

But we shouldn’t become a society excited by colourful but hollow things and temporary fads.

Our young generations will do well to remember the mantra of the oldest workers on earth: (no, not those) salespeople. “Stop talking and close the sale!"

Only when we harness the power of collaboration to the full in an organized fashion, will this system have made its mark for good. Is that happening today?

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Bibliography

http://niquel757.blogspot.com

http://trendirama.com

http://digg.com

http://therivalproject.com/

http://YoutTube.com

Brand Packaging - “Targeting twentysomethings: strategies that work"

Keywords: internet, tags, ajax, google, digg, delicious, social, bookmarking, Microsoft, google, del.icio.us, delicious, tools, tagging, tags, bookmarks, web2.0, web, social, blog, change, present, future, trendirama.com

Written by Javier Marti for Trendirama.com

Javier Marti, Montevideo, 1975, is an entrepreneur, writer and artist. MD of artwater.com and founder of Trendirama.com, he writes and presents in English and Spanish, on a wide variety of subjects. When he has time, Javier regularly follows interesting news and affairs on his blog http://niquel757.blogspot.com