An ode to the web. An ode to you.

Often I hear the question “Why are you doing all the web2.0 stuff?” Over and over again. “Why are you blogging?”, “Why are you using twitter?”, “Why are you on facebook?”… “Why are you presenting yourself to the whole world?”. So, I thought about it.

I could say something about the shift of media/communication/our culture. But I am not.

Basically my intention of using social media is best represented by a quote of George Bernard Shaw:
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

And right now I wanna thank people who are often sharing ideas with me. These people give sense to the whole web2.0 thing. (Or at least are always in the mood for a good joke!)

Thanks to:

Malte, Kai, Steffen, Nils, Ben, Christina, Sebastian, Ralf, Johannes, Alex, Florian, Torsten, Jonas, Youna, Philipp, Paul, the people of Whitetapes, Jeriko, Philipp, Marc, Jan-Marco, Nils, the people of fakeguru, Oliver, Cornelius, Marcel and many more.

And what I really like that most of the ideas cross the border to the real world. That’s what I like most about social media / web2.0 / social web, whatever you want to call it.

I must admit, this blog post is in the status “draft” for seeveral weeks. I was working on it yesterday and decided to publish it today. And just minutes before pushing on the button “publish”, I stumbled upon Jessica’s decleration of love to the internet and I am stunned. In my opinion you can forget all the internet/web2.0 manifestos out there, Jessica gets it:

“I think there are six main categories of “opportunities for prosperity and pleasure” you can get online. I think they are these feelings or experiences:

- Being fascinated, engrossed, delighted
- Research/Analyse/Fan
- Play/create/remix
- Express yourself/build identity/curate your personality
- Make friends/connect
- Have your say/Achieve Change”

Truely, she vocalises what I think!

Clay Shirky also talks about the positive sides/chances of social media:

And at Johannes Kleske’s blog tautoko I found the documentation “Us now” about social web:

“Us Now takes a look at how this type of participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever.”

The picture above is from PMertens and under cc-license.