The Long Slow Death of Web 2.0

OK, so the title is a little over the deep end - more provocative than anything else.

But perhaps it is partially justified. Reuters reported today that participation on Web 2.0 sites is weak. For media conglomerates that are heavily invested and can pay for a long, slow ascendancy for Web 2.0, there is no news here. However, for museums, this news is earth-shattering.

Take for instance, a recent presentation from Museums and the web. Mike Ellis and Brian Kelly make a great case for museums to leverage new tools and services online. Their presentation, entitled "Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organizational Barriers." In their slides, the list of barrier that the presenters highlight includes the following:

1. “Simply, Why Should We Bother?”
   
2. Cultural and Political: “It’s My Content…”
   
3. Technical
   
4. Resource and Cost
   
5. Content: Legality, Privacy, Liability
   
6. Measuring It
   

Yet, ironically, the barrier to Web 2.0 might have more to do with user and market barriers than with the organizational variety. Agreeing with the presentation, the fact is that yes, museums do have great content, do already syndicate that content and have audiences that are interested. However, the scale of that audience is debatable.

According to the Reuters story, participation on Web 2.0 sites like Flickr and YouTube is measured in the tenths of one percent of visitors. Granted, this is a large number of participants, but it does bring into question how widely adopted and feasible (and replicable) Web 2.0 services are.

So while there may be great potential for Web 2.0 services and sites, I would be careful about advocating for capital funding or donor-sponsored projects just yet. Though in time this projects may make sense, right now there is just a very real question about how viable these truly are in serving as education and outreach mechanism for museums and other cultural institutions.

Museums: To Flickr or Not To Flickr

The Brooklyn Museum has done a fantastic job of late leveraging some of their internal images while also enabling users' to upload and tag images of the Museum. They have leveraged the Flickr platform to give an inside look both into the creation and experience of their exhibitions - most recently the critically acclaimed Ron Mueck show. Though this feature has now been taken off the Museum's home page (it still lives on here, along with their other blogs) - the exploration into image serving and tagging provides a great insight into how Museums might serve cultural content on Web 2.0 platforms.

This is a topic worth discussing. Below is a short review of two image tagging sites. One commercial, (Flickr) the other, a joint museum research project called Steve.

Flickr

Flickr is a fully integrated platform whose primary purpose is not a folksonomy or image catalog, but the more basic storage and sharing of images amongst a diverse community of users. Social tagging is a by-product in all this. Tagging, from a functional perspective, is one of many ways in which friends and guests can comment on an image – tagging here is analogous to “comments-light” – a deprecated form of user feedback and dialogue.

What I find most intriguing about Flickr is that it points to a velvet revolution for the semantic web. The emergence of a descriptive, meta-data driven web will emerge not through killer app’s but ‘smart platforms’ that allow people to choose, create, share, comment and interact with content. Clearly, with 5.5 Million registered users and 20 Million monthly visitors - the sheer size of the network insures the platform's relevancy - but its power lies in replicating users' "natural" interactions on the web.

This is exactly the model that Museums need. Though the platform may be proprietary, the social content model leaves plenty of room for the cultural sector to define its own space and requirements.


Steve

Steve is a joint research project of technology practicioners of SFMoMA, the Met, Indianapolis Museum of Art, LACMA and Guggenheim. It is an interactive tool designed for Museum researchers, curators, technology practitioners and librarians. Steve is based on the concept of folksonomy. According to Wikipedia, a folksonomy– antithetical to taxonomy – is a labeling system created and maintained by the end-users, not a class of outside experts. In theory, a folksonomy creates more natural and user-centric search and aggregation systems.

I recently had a great discussion with a technology developer at a major art Museum regarding the life of information in peoples' actual lives. He pointed out that tagging, bookmarking and information storage is personal. With sites like Del.icio.us , part of the user's value is the
ability to choose and create networks of personally relevant resources and references - remarkably similar to the personal value of Museums. Yet, the experience of Steve is far from personal. I greatly admire the goal but the execution leaves something to be desired.

2/7/2007 UPDATE: I recently caught up with a contributor to Steve and he mentioned that the project has received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and would soon be unveiling a site update. This is a great development and demonstrates the sheer possibility of this project. It is certainly worth following. I'll check back on Steve after that redesign has gone live with some further thoughts, perhaps even an interview (fingers-crossed).