What Car Traffic and Web 2.0 Have in Common

It is always hard to explain the Web 2.0 phenomenon to people who are not used to it. I tried to compare microblogging with Newspapers earlier. I had another analogy in mind on my way to work today.

Let us compare cars with their drivers and the user in the web. The old web was build like a car without windows on the sides and in the back. It had no horn, no headlamps and no reflectors. The front window was just so big that the driver could see all things 1 meter in front of her. This is like the anonymous web user who discovers his own lonely way throughout the huge web and its knowledge.

But this is not the way we build cars. What we need for effective traveling is awareness. For this reason we have all these windows, headlamps, winkers and brake lights. Modern cars even have electronic systems based on infrared to enhance the awareness of objects around. We have navigation devices with integrated traffic jam detection and so on.

This is exactly what happened to the web. Users are aware of each other. Comments on blogs lead to other blogs and persons. Social Networking Services like Facebook tell you what is new in your network. You can read recommendations from other users before you buy a book online. And so on. Web 2.0 today even goes beyond this car analogy. This is because the modern web is personalized. If every car had your name and email address on the bonnet it would be something similar. Let us see what happens next