[Update - Interesting feedback (backlash?) over on the BBC's Have Your Say.]
According to the Internet World Stats page, which was updated on Nov 27th 2006, internet usage penetration is at 16.6%. Time magazine just announced that their person of the year is 'you' - meaning all of us involved in social media content. I find this particularly uninspiring. While there certainly has been a great shift in how the web impacts our lives, this article (which I assume contains some reflection of the reasoning behind the decision) fails to justify this selection. One is then left to wonder if Time is simply balancing a real act of journalism with generating hype and attention for itself.
I'd like to see more backing for:
It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
and
It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.
How does the content on YouTube really matter? I mean, I love watching old ABBA videos, but...
You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.
That's right. It is so important for me to know about who has a poster of Britney on their wall and who has one of Justin - I need to know this and yet, amazingly, network TV is not telling me!
We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.
Yeah baby - and we certainly weren't building open-source software before 2006. BTW, what percentage of the 16.6% of people with access to the intenet built open source software?
America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others.
Now I'm imagining Einstein getting 'help' regarding general relativity via his MySpace page - imagine how much better a use of his time that would be.
We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.
Is blogging about knitting or what Bobby told Sandra in science class currency in the global intellectual economy?
Of course, I do believe there is value in social media, and I am passionate about the space - I live and breathe it. I just think that Time has wasted an opportunity to highlight something that really matters in exchange for riding shotgun on the hype wagon of Web 2.0.
Other commentary of note.
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