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.

Technology Tour 4/11 - 4/17

• Live from Google: Time for Philanthropy 3.0? - Google puts some of its technological muscle to aid a worthy nonprofit. This is noteworthy for two reasons: 1) the usage of Web 2.0 (via mashups) in the aid of social causes and fundraising and 2) the Internet titans are publically partnering with nonprofits to improve the world in which we live. There has not been enough of this cooperation between the new tech. sector giants and the nonprofit sector.
  
  
• Museum Mashups - A worthwhile presentation from the Museums and the Web Conference, Jim Spadaccini explores mashups including emerging best practices, design challenges and inherent usability issues for this upcoming staple of web content.
  
  
• Repairing the Guggenheim - The New York Times has an interesting info-graphic on the deterioration of the Guggenheim.
  
  
• Best of the Web 2007 - Museums - Every year, the MW-community nominates sites to be considered for the Best of the Web awards. Congratulations to the winners, but every year I am disappointed with how few major museums are on this list. This is to say nothing of the list, rather every about the institutions.
  

Technology Tour 3/28 - 4/10

• The Tech Museum of Innovation Announces That School Field Trips Are Now FREE - I continue to be impressed by this institution.
  
• Virtual Typewriter Museum - Great article from Boing Boing featuring another low technology. My question, is the Internet actually extending the conversation about technology that would have previously disappeared from memory? The quote, "technology's development to its social relevance to typewriter art". Interesting stuff, but is it meaningful?
  
• New immersive platforms for museums and education! - Well, maybe. A interesting article about immersive entertainment and education platforms. This sounds like second life gone academic. The question will be whether people want to pretend to be Paul Revere (because there can only be so many Paul Reveres) in an immersive world or whether they want to design fake brand name clothing and design digital equivalents to famous museums.
  
• Radical Trust: The State of the Museum Blogosphere - A conference paper on the breadth and depth of museum discourse amongst bloggers presented at the Museum and the Web conference.
  
• Art museum raffles a house raise funds - The Tuscon Museum of Art is raffling a home worth $600,000 or $400,000 cash. This hardly seems in line with a spirit of philanthropy, but it beats de-accessioning world-class Picasso's from a collection. Interesting note about this story, they are also selling raffle tickets on the web. It would be a truly great story if this news story caught fire and ticket purchases went through the roof. Who knows? Time will tell.

Smithsonian For Sale

It is so easy to pick on the Smithsonian right now.

Verizon Foundation Announces $31 Million Investment in Thinkfinity.org - From the newswire, it seems Verizon is investing in wireless technologies to aid and reinforce learning and one of their newest partners will be the Smithsonian.

“Smithsonian's National Museum of American History was announced as Thinkfinity's 11th content partner. The museum's electronic outreach program creates experiences that incorporate qualities of a museum visit with the flexibility and interactivity of online tools. As a partner, the museum plans to help create family and after-school offerings on Thinkfinity.org.”

Wow, technology, educations, kids and museums... does it get any better? And the name, doesn't thinkfinity sound so much better than Verizon? Much less corporate.

Sarcasm aside, this newest deal with Verizon underscores their greater management problems. The current (and now former) executive team has time and time again failed to understand how public institutions can serve the public in the online and media world without selling vital resources and programs to private interests. As a management decision falls into the same traps that the institute has stumbled through before - misunderstanding the relationship between the public and private sectors (see examples such as content licensing, exclusive corporate access and for-profit tourism partnering) What makes me uncomfortable in this whole stream of services is that the institute continues to hand over viable program mediums to private entities.

In this case, wireless infrastructure and technology are a promising emerging opportunity for organizations to create their own footprint and level of service, not sell it to the first bidder.

So what if this is being routed through a corporate foundation. Given Verizon's vested interest in the infrastructure and direction of the wireless world, I am a little cynical about this "investment" and the idea of philanthropy here. Why the cynicism? In 2002 Verizon effectively abandoned the opportunity to provide wireless coverage of New York City; its parks, citizens, students and museums. Apparently, it was neither visible nor profitable enough to pursue? Why the about-face now?

Two reasons, 1) the Smithsonian undervalued its brand, audience and services and 2) the growth of WiFi has lit a fire under the communications company. As wireless service reaches a critical saturation, the next communication medium (WiFi) is the newest frontier. How better to corner that market than to make kids think Verizon when they education, museums and WiFi services. Remember Apple's committment to education 20 years ago? It was a brilliant strategy for fostering a grass-roots user-base and brand recognition that is paying dividends today. Verizon has taken a page from their books. Great marketing it is, philanthropy it is not.

The Smithsonian should have known better; hopefully increased government oversight will.

Technology Tour 3/19 - 3/27

No particular theme this week, just a lot of general commotion; the Smithsonian under scrutiny, the NY Times with a great feature on Museums around the US (As I noted in previous posts, see how much more effective geo-tagged data can be?) and the Museums & the web conference just around the corner. There's alot happening in the museum and technology worlds, so on to the tour...

• One Picture, 1000 Tags - Pamela LiCalzi O’Connell of The New York Times catches up to the museum trend of social image tagging. As you may know this is a topic I have devoted many a keystroke to here, here and here. And while the analysis is pretty lowest-common denominator, I thought this quote framed social tagging in quite an effective way "If you try to find those paintings on the museum’s Web site you will probably fail unless you know the title or artist. You can’t search based on what you see." Or what you remember for that matter. The elephant in the room here is still platforms for increasing the scope of tagging and usage. That is, answering the question of what is in it for me in terms of the end user.
  
  
• Six Vital Questions Every Web Site Owner Should Be Asking - Tony Baker on his blog provides a good breakdown of how museums can analyze their web presence, traffic and experience. His point on the disconnect between museums and their websites? "Yes, they can walk through the museum and wander around if they want, but you should have an obvious tour that is available to them." This is no less true online.
  
  
• Cosby Taps YouTube for Slavery Museum Donations - and no one seemed to listen. Bill Cosby has created a website called eightbucks.org where he challenged website users and social video addicts to edit a video and post it to YouTube. Check it out because it is intriguing (and a good cause). The goals of this campaign was the "soliciting donations toward the building of a $200 million slavery museum." This is big goal and unfortunately, the campaign has had little success. Clearly, the approach is groundbreaking, using social content as a direct platform for philanthropy.
  

Gross Clinic: Success and Distress

Make no mistake, I am excited that the Eakins painting is remaining in the care of the the Philadelphia Museum. By any measure, the Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins is an amazing acquisition, one of which any Museum or city would be proud.

However, there are other issues than Jefferson, Philadelphia and Thomas Eakins. There are ramifications for the field of philanthropy as a whole in this case. In the media, the prospect of losing the Eakins was framed as the equivalent to a natural disaster for the art and history communities in Philadelphia. What is troubling in the whole affair is that the museum had to tap a crisis-psychology across its cross-channel fundraising campaign (View Pages). As successful, creative and unique as this approach to marketing and fundraising is, there exists a real possibility that the public response may also be unique.

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If Museums are able to garner such philanthropy around the maintenance of a single piece of art in crisis, it is disheartening to ponder how cultural institutions (in general) have such difficulty with ongoing fundraising. Last October, Bloomberg noted the recent trend of declining funding for the arts (-10.6% between 2005 and 2006). Further, in today's Wall Street Journal there is an article by Robert Hughes entitled "Firms Funding Arts Seek a Return". Echoing the Bloomberg report, Hughes also notes that donations to performing arts organizations have declined by 25% since 2000. From Hughes' perspective, this decline is meaningful because it forces Museums to offer greater visibility, benefits and premiums in exchange for support from top institutional donors. He labels this philanthropy "transactional".

The bottom line is that the cultural sector is having to find ever more market-driven angles for supporting their institutions. This raises serious questions of how institutions consider fundraising initiatives that the public might value. Because, let's face it, Museums need lights, guards and heat. These, however, are not great or flashy marketing causes.

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In the final analysis, it is disingenuous that the arts are funded generously in support of "keeping works" but not to keep these same works cleaned, guarded and open to the public. I certainly hope that the Philadelphia Museum is able to build on the Eakins success (both symbolic and economic) by increasing its visitorship and Membership roles. That is, that the interest and support that the Gross Clinic has attracted will be stewarded to create deep and meaningful relationships with the public. This is a great opportunity to do it. The first challenge was keeping the important work, the next is remaining important.