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New communication behaviours in a Web 2.0 world
4. Non–believers 2.0 – fears and criticisms
The number of users of the internet is growing. However, there remain those who believe that
this current evolution will soon crash. They are comparing current growth to the dot.net bubble
in 2000.
The main argument of these ‘non-believers’ is that Web 2.0 start-ups do not have any real
income source: their business model is often based either on future predictions of tremendous
growth in online advertisements or on a wish to be acquired by a strategic investor early on.
They point to the over-valuation of start-up companies such as Facebook, which was valued at
$15 billion by Microsoft.
The main reason for such doubts is that online advertising revenues, still the only working
business model for these start-ups, are not growing quickly enough. By this argument either
revenues will not be able to fulfil the needs of Web 2.0 companies or there will be so many
players interested in showing advertisements that prices will plummet.
Andrew Keen, in his book
The Cult of the Amateur
56
, highlights other criticisms. The majority
of internet content, he points out, comes from unknown sources, mainly amateurs who are
providing content which, intentionally, or unintentionally, might not always be accurate.
Literally everyone is able to change the content (on Wikipedia for example) and potentially
manipulate people’s minds. At the same time there is also a lot of pirated
content being uploaded onto the internet, undermining intellectual property
laws. The author calls this a ‘culture that endorses piracy and plagiarism’.
There will be attempts from companies to replace some of the IT systems by
‘mash-up’ software. However, some IT experts think such applications will
just make the systems crash and they will return to standard applications.
Thus IT workers feel that, for now, their jobs are safe.
In response to this criticism, other authors argue that there is no bubble; all
the movement is driven by innovations and the number of internet users,
both of which have crossed over the critical mass line. Companies may not
yet be producing profits, they say, but the costs of running such platforms
have decreased tremendously during the last decade; it is in fact easier to
enter the IT business today than at any other time.
The response to the fear of online manipulation is that the mass of users will
simply not allow it. An example of this was when there was an attempt to
manipulate the Wikipedia pages about the Holocaust by radical extremists.
Within minutes – before official editors had even realized what had
happened – internet users deleted the fake content and corrected the page.
The main argument of
‘non‑believers’ is that
Web 2.0 start‑ups do not
have any real income source:
their business model is
often based on predictions
of growth in online
advertisements or on a wish
to be acquired by a strategic
investor
Summary of Contents for Web 2.0 services
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