The next web revolution – Web 3.0 – is going to be centered around real-time data and search, so say the tech media mavens. Leading the charge is of course Twitter (now available in your search in both Google and Microsoft form), but everybody else is jumping into the fray too, saying how awesome it is to report locations, in real-time, and otherwise leave a conspicuous digital trail ripe for exploit.
When CNN and Fox News are holding regular news segments that consist of nothing more than reading prescreened online posts, you know traditional media is desperately trying to speed up the news cycle too.
I say it’s going in the wrong direction.
First reactions are worthless in general. Someone who breaks the news is providing value, but of course that’s hard and takes some effort and luck, though it doesn’t take much to simply respond to a breaking piece. The desolate wasteland of Youtube comments demonstrate how little thought goes into most reactions; I wonder how many “lol”s are in Youtube’s comments database.
The real substance in a topic lies in its long tail, the series of thoughtful, in-depth discussions based around the subject; it simply takes time to do further research and analysis and come up with something meaningful to add to the discussion. That “meat” is what ends up sticking around: news articles written up hours or days after the story broke, fleshing out the entire ordeal and providing all the informational context to fully digest what’s been happening. A search for “Michael Jackson” now doesn’t return tweets anymore.
In fact, the Digg model works precisely by repackaging slightly old news, and stories with an interesting writeup or witty title are dugg up on a regular basis (though there’s also been stories that have been “Flash-Dugg”, i.e., receive a lot of votes because of its breaking nature, more on that later). People get punished (buried) for sprouting what’s essentially commenting vulgarity – the singular “FIRST!” post – to keep pointless reactions hidden. The interesting, insightful, and witty reactions float to the top.
That’s not to say that some reactions aren’t useful for distribution. The Twitter equivalent – the retweet – is a powerful tool for disseminating news out to a lot of users in parallel: viral process at its finest. For Digg anyway, some news articles are voted way up, and despite the disproportionate fewer number of comments land on the front page and are viewed by a lot more eyeballs. I suspect in general, people who are interested in breaking stories are looking more for an aggregate reaction – an indicator of significance – than poring over a series of doppelganger one-liners.
I should totally close the comments for this post. Well, if anybody actually made one around here.
first!
srsly though – good analysis. With sites such as digg (I esp like the aggregator originalsignal.digg.com) it’s always interesting to read commentary, but it’s difficult to discern the armchair quarterbacks from the pros – that is, the everyman providing his feedback vs experts in the field. I think the advent of web2.0/3.0 will blur the line a little.
That’s it, I’m disabling comments.