The Killer Wave: The Social Web

Abstract

After the dotcom bust, there was in the minds of the general population a question of what the web was good for, and there was a backlash against companies which had built their business around the web to the extent that there almost needed to be a reason to go back to enterprises and justify that web-based business made sense. It was evident that the web should find a new path. This opened the door for emphasizing other facets than electronic commerce or business from the web’s rich set of features. In this state of affairs the web got redirected more towards people, the process of which is explained in this chapter. The new wave of the web, the social web, started quickly to massively influence human life, business and society. In this sense it is like a killer wave; it transforms people and societies, destroys old businesses, and opens up new opportunities. This is so even though new human-centered applications could be seen as boring from technology and marketing perspectives, refashioning of old technologies to do things that make everyday tasks easier. Because there was already a critical mass of information on the web, a key aspect now became how to make use of that information and leverage user participation from the bottom up, based on what people actually do, rather than the top down, based on what companies would suggest them to do.