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New communication behaviours in a Web 2.0 world
A.2 Collective intelligence – Wikis
Knowledge in the Web 2.0 environment is built directly by the users. Some of the most popular
tools for building shared knowledge are so-called wikis. These are websites that allow the
user to freely add and upgrade content directly from the Web browser. Wikis are often used as
a source of common knowledge by a certain group, allowing members so increase their own
understanding and share their learnings.
When a critical mass of participation is reached within a site or system, we can say that
collective intelligence has been achieved. That is, there are enough participants monitoring a
site’s content to ensure that only valuable information is included.
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Examples
The most successful example of shared knowledge development,
Wikipedia
is an internet
encyclopaedia written completely by users. In six years it has grown to become a trusted source
of information. It contains more than 8.7 million articles, created by 75,000 active contributors
writing in more than 250 different languages.
Wikipedia is funded by user donations and is free of advertisements and commercial content.
Although it is an online store,
Amazon
has developed into a highly respected public forum in
which its users write reviews and offer a nought‑to‑five‑star evaluations for books, CDs, toys
and many other products. Not only are Amazon’s directories respected but the opinions of a
number of reviewers have themselves become trusted.
However, the reviews and evaluation activities are not a core activity. Amazon is an internet
store whose business model is based on the sale of goods.
A.3 Digital content management (media sharing websites)
Sharing of videos and personal images has become one of the most popular parts of the Web.
End-users share videos and images – personal or professional – with other end-users. The videos
are watched, enjoyed (or not), rated and discussed. Podcasts operate on a similar basis except
that they involve sound-only files uploaded onto the internet.
Examples
You Tube
(www.youtube.com) is the most popular video sharing site in the world. Its users share
and watch their own, or downloaded, videos, rate them and comment on them.
Flickr
(www.flickr.com) is a portal for uploading, sharing and storing pictures. They can be kept
private or shared with other users. Pictures can be rated, commented on and ranked.
PodcastAlley
(www.podcastalley.com) is a Web portal where users can search for and listen to
podcasts uploaded on the internet.
The business model of these providers is mainly advertising‑based. Most of these services have
been bought by big global brands such as Google and Yahoo, allowing them to capitalize on
the opportunity to link these services with their own.
Содержание Web 2.0 services
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