Advantage and Disadvantage of Web 2.0

SOMETIMES I’m thinking about is everything good about Web 2.0?

Everything has its virtues and shortcomings even though I’m studying and using this. For example, 95% of personal computer operating system on the earth is using Microsoft Windows, but does it mean the product is good? Well my point is not about this, my point is what makes us to use Web 2.0 and how we are pushed to use Web 2.0.

In general, the main advantage of Web 2.0 is that the information flows freely. Everyone can contribute and share the information or ideas without repression. In addition, people are able to receive information from various resources, not only the newspaper and TV anymore. It also means that people are receiving different concepts for one thing. Furthermore, the community makes the use of Web 2.0 growing rapidly. People use the communities to do the communication via the Internet, a variety of ideas, opinions, and news are shared between different countries and communities.

On the other hand, the drawback of Web 2.0 is dependence. For example, cloud computing (Web e-mail, Google doc, Facebook, Youtube) is the hot topic recently, and people and enterprises are currently using it. This means we are relying on the cloud computing vendors to run our business. What if the system crashes? What will happen to our business? How many loss we will have?

More specific example for is Google Gmail. The service has been crashed for a few times (see the news here), since many small/medium enterprises are using Gmail app for their e-email solution, some of enterprises have lost money because the hang of Gmail.

Frankly, the enterprise must think about a backup solution to prevent the loss of the disable Web 2.0 solutions.

The other concerning issue is sharing. Although one of the core values of Web 2.0 is to share things, what if the things are a copyright? Don’t people have to pay for it if they’ve shared or have been shared?

I think some of firms like the movie factories and music companies are gingerly utilising Web 2.0 tools. For example, we can watch videos and listen to music via Youtube, but they may be not authorised to be played by these firms. However, Roadshow Films has deployed a channel on Youtube as a way to broadcast their movies, especially it’s a free service.

To conclude, Web 2.0 is still being adopted from this world, and there are still so many things such as the ethics of Web 2.0 or the health impact of the Web 2.0 users to be concerned. Let’s challenging Web 2.0.

Another micro-blogging tools: Plurk

EVERYONE is just talking about Twitter, however it isn’t the only one micro-blogging tool.

I’m introducing you a different style micro-blogging: Plurk.
Twitter shows the messages like a stack, i.e the newest message comes on the top, while Plurk uses a timeline to show when the messages coming in.

This is how Twitter showing the message:

And this is how Plurk showing the message:

One of the features of Plurk is the timeline, a user can clearly see the time point of an event by the timeline chart as the picture shown. Yes I know that Twitter shows the date & time as well, but the way it shows is just shown on the bottom of the event. Well I can’t say which one is better, but to me, I prefer Plurk way. (because I’m lazy?)

Another difference is the responses. On Twitter, the responses that your friends sent to you can only be seen by you! You followers don’t know what other people have answered to you.

This picture shows the responses after the author posted a question:
(picture comes from the internet)

Plurk is different, you are able to know what others have answered:

This is captured from my Plurk account, ‘stanjuly’ is my username, and I can see my friend ulin’s responses from others. Also, others can see what my friends have answered to me as well!

So what means for this difference?

It means everyone can benefit from the whole conversation. NOT just you.
We may have some experiences that we found the answers from someone else’s Q&A, and we didn’t even post a question!
This is what and how Plurk makes the differences from Twitter. And I would say that Plurk’s conversation style towards to the concept of Web 2.0 more closely.

Try to use Plurk and you may find more interesting stuff.