Natural Evolution - The Top Ten Iphone Replacements That Microsoft Wants [PIC]

Social Bookmarking Websites are definitely a trend – most of the techies/geeky receive a feed from one SBW every day, telling them what’s the new buzz, what’s the news with the Iphone in Yugoslavia or the best top 10 reasons to stop questioning your parents. But, with the rise of new competitors to the market that bring new added value, are SBW going down the same path Newspapers went – from source of news to shallow tabloids?.
Well, in my opinion, yes. Unfortunately, what began as sharing place for the most recent and interesting news have become corrupted to certain information patterns that are more appealing to users. What are interesting are the motifs behind it – while for newspapers, profit was the driving force, in SBW audiences and notoriety are. There is no apparent profit to be made with Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon. But, for a user to gain popularity for having the most clicks, well, this is what Generation C is all about. So, while in the beginning we might have had an interesting source of news clipping on what was going on the web, now we are beginning to watch as SBW are “fighting” (it is actually a user war, not an enterprise struggle) the popularity war not by increasing the quality of their content, but by displaying random bits of shallow information or plain entertainment in a specific format – the best Top 10, the [PIC] or using everlasting keywords such as Google, Apple or Microsoft. And the fact is that the engines themselves can’t do anything about it – they try to add value to their websites by adding functionalities that appeal to the users. And I’m not placing every SBW in the same bag – Techmeme, for example, has more selective information, IMO, than a more entertainment focused StumbleUpon. But in the end, it all comes down to the seduction level of the content.
What comes to my mind is – what can we learn from this? That the drive for people is some sort of recognition – be it profit or recognition. But better yet, that there is, as proven in various other posts I made, a natural evolution in information exhibition and social phenomena. You’ve seen it happen in SNW; now see it happen in SBW. But, the most important factor is that it is happening for a whole different reason. So, when you think about online audiences, take in mind that they’ll react to certain stimulus in the expected way, but those stimulus should take in account the mind frame of the online world – don’t expect a Digg user to be happy about making a buck for every click, but believe me, he’ll love it if his popularity ranking goes up!