Web 2.suck

What? You mean not all endeavors to capitalize on the creativity of crowds (to borrow phrasing from James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds) are a spectacular hit? So Heinz, in an advertising contest for it’s ketchup, has found out.

My snarky, but I’d argue amusing, catch of this typo, and Raph Koster’s post about not being snobby about user generated content, has got me wanting to clarify a few thoughts on Web 2.0. (Though I doubt that post was even referring to me, in that I generally doubt anyone reads this blog other than those who specifically post, link, or otherwise interact with me about it – just a certain pessimism I employ in any creative endeavor).

First off – user generated content is cool. As someone who gets paid to do creative work, I know how rewarding it can be and because of that I try to encourage folks I come into contact with to pursue expressing themselves creatively in any way shape or form. A lot of time folks express apprehension over being bad at it – but mostly everybody’s bad at it at first. Or some folks think just because they’re not going to put out Shakespeare they shouldn’t write, for instance. I try to convince them putting out Shakespeare isn’t the point, it’s just the existential pleasure that comes from one, expressing yourself, and two, seeing people enjoy and be affected by that (I don’t use the phrase existential pleasure when I do this, though). Shakespeare was, I imagine, much more concerned with those two things then being better than… uh, Francis Bacon? Er, something like that.

So lowering the barrier for people to feel that is cool. Very cool. Check.

But that’s not Web 2.0.

The model that’s worked really well for games is that, hey, people buy a game. They’re entertained. They can then also create new portions of the game and share them with other players. The game creators take the time to ensure their product has entertainment value, and then share the ability to create entertainment with their users – indirectly, possibly, not always, enhancing the value of their own product. But the focus is typically on providing value to their consumer than it is simply increasing the value of their product via a network effect (although the former can get you the latter).

How’s that different from Web 2.0? Well, the barrier to creation is none, most companies give away their tools or services for free. (Although maybe they have higher tiers of users/subscription types).

Which leaves companies to focus on trying to monetize (god I hate that fucking word) their users’ contributions. Let’s take a quick look at that word – if someone wanted to make money off a better product or by giving more value to their consumers, they would say that. To “monetize” something, is try and look for value where there currently is none. And so it becomes easy to look for opportunities to charge people (maybe not always the consumer) instead of looking for opportunities of giving them value for their dollar.

Now Web 2.0 sites have gotten better at this, so they start making lots of money. What do the users get? Nothing really, other than attention based on their work (I’m gonna get back to this one). One might say it’s a symbiotic relationship, but if you compare what one side gets vs. the other, it seems to be a bit more parasitic – the Web 2.0 companies simply bite many pieces of lots of people than just biting one big piece out of one person. I just don’t think Web 2.0 companies focus as heavily on empowering their users as an end in and of itself, as the games who have sucessfully explored user-created content have, than empowering their ability to make money off of their users.

The next problem is the type of content that is rewarded on Web 2.0 sites. Quality work isn’t the defining factor of success. It’s anything that will get you attention, since that’s the only value users of these sites get. It’s a lot easier to make something sensationalistic and crude to get attention than it is to make something thought provoking or with emotional depth. It’s not just that there’s a lot of crap, it’s the priorities of the communities that are creating it. If creative expression was in fact the primariy value that culture rewarded, the content would be different (most of it would still be crap, and a small portion of it would be good, but it would be fundamentally different content across the board). As it is, truly creative expression is allowed but not necessarily rewarded, so it tends to be on the fringe. So we get a lot of sensationalistic crap, and a small portion of really entertaining, but still sensationalistic, crap. Although the use of the second crap is my own value judgement. And to be fair, I readily admit a lot of my own professional work falls under that same designation.

Which gets to to main difference between “users” and “creators” (Raph Koster argues there is none, or it’s artificial). There is and it’s not in the resulting work – the defining factor is their level of commitment. “Creators” – like people who upload videos to YouTube that are truly interested in making film – are going to spend more time on it. Eventually they will tend to want the expressive power they can’t get on anything like a Web 2.0 site, because they’ll get better at creating in their medium. So while lowering the barriers to creative expression is cool, don’t expect the media of Web 2.0 sites to effectively replace any other media (another big sell of Web 2.0).

That spectrum doesn’t end with a creator. There’s a part of it that most people, on or off the spectrum, ignore. For lack of a better description, this is the myth-maker. The modern-day shaman. This type of creator has realized their content has a role to play in society at large (a role typically played by mythologies in older cultures) – to help shape it and act as a positive force in it. They have taken upon themselves to play this role, this responsibility, because no one else does or will. It’s a fundamental role but one that gets overlooked a lot, even by people who are at the very height of their creative ability. And when people talk about Web 2.0 and user created content being the Next Big Thing(tm), they also are ignoring the power that people who take on this role have. Being able to upload your content and share it with others is not going to make anyone make that perspective shift to myth-maker – it just takes a lot more than that it would seem.