NIC HARALAMBOUS

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What has web 2.0 done to us? Passive time vs Active time

I just watched an interesting video over on Vinny's blog. A great video to watch inspite of the video itself being old.I picked out one very interesting concept from the video that caught my eye. This was the difference between what we did with our time before the "web2.0" boom and what we do with our time now.The difference is simple and quite profoundly true. Before the massive concept of User Generated Content (UGC) we would spend our free time passively. Watch TV, go to a pub, read a book. And sure we are still doing these things. But now we as a generation are much more active with out time.We blog, we interact on social networks, we create videos to upload and we search for any and all information using the search engines available to us. Everything is more active with nuances of "passive relief" in our daily habits.What I mean by passive relief is the need to break away from the activity. It is tiring earning YouTube, Myspace, Digg, Blogger, Facebook and others all their money. And I really mean that. As users we are earning all of these sites their cash. If we don't like a website or concept it will crash through lack of UGC. If we do, it booms and the creators get loaded. Simple.But invariably this will become web 2.0's antic disposition. The greatest strength and one of the distinct differences between web 2.0 and web 1.0 is UGC. What would YouTube be without user gerenated videos? It would me nothing, or it would be a media organisation employing people to produce video much like The Times here in SA.What do you think? Will UGC be the climax and downfall of web 2.0? Will there be a downfall of web 2.0? Or are you already on the bandwagon trying to create wealth via web 2.0?