Web 2.0

What's the big deal with Twitter? As far as I can see it is a mechanism to allow large quantities of low value noise into your life while at the same time being a device for ego stroking. No I'm not interested in your every idle non-thought, and I don't need to feed my ego hourly. And it doesn't work very well.

In a previous post we looked at excitement - hype even - about the potential for Web 2.0, in particular what is known as the Wisdom of the Crowd. But majority does not equal truth. Voting is good for social decision making but not for advancing knowledge. It isn’t even a majority anyway that fills the forums and blogs and wikis. It is the voice of a fanatical few. And the Crowd equates fame with wisdom. The Crowd also fails to discriminate between sources of information.

There is much excitement about the potential for Web 2.0, in particular what is known as the Wisdom of the Crowd. Wikipedia becomes the repository of all knowledge, Google search statistics are the zeitgeist of the times and MySpace is the face of the world. Page rank is a measure of authority. Corporations appeal to the public for solutions to problems. The ivory tower is replaced by the democracy of the commons; the proclamations of the cathedral displaced by the hubbub of the bazaar. Not so fast.

Last post on MyCMDB: I want to share with you the comment I left over on a really great post on CIO Weblog, because it leads in to a couple of posts I will be making about the Folly of the Crowd.

Blogging is developing into this incestuous industry of bloggers writing about blogging and each other. The resulting spiral has the industry rapidly disappearing up its own fundamental orifice.

Fuelled by the vanity of everyone having their own soapbox, a money engine is emerging where blogging is seldom about anything useful or relevant outside of its own onanistic world. Bloggers are all busy selling advertising and affiliate programs to each other. Their content is on how to blog, or how to make money from the internet which usually involves ... wait for it ... blogging.

ITSM View has drawn our attention to the official "Change Control System" for ITIL (and presumably other) documentation on the Best Practice site owned by OGC, APM Group, the Best Practice User Group, itSMF and TSO. He has done a great public service by doing so, because nobody else has, least of all the ITIL books themselves.

The hype wave of Web 2.0 approaches a crescendo. Apparently it is going to transform IT and reengineer the business. The IT Skeptic thinks not. Actually I think "not again".