The Big Nothing

As I’ve fruitlessly tried to get Technorati to update its listings for this blog, it’s become more apparent that the service is in zombie mode. Like many companies today, Technorati has done away with support personnel in favor of having users try to answer each others’ questions in a discussion forum. But that’s hardly of any use anymore as the forums fill with notes that Technorati doesn’t respond to support tickets. Still, how could they? As the economy tanks, there’s no money for firms with questionable business models like Technorati and the server bills have to be paid before little things like functionality are addressed. 

This is hardly meant as a rant against Technorati. In contrast, it strikes me that the "social Web" is imploding. Over at Newser, MIchael Wollf observes that Facebook’s CFO has left and concludes that "The wheels are coming off the bus at Facebook." Things are no better at Twitter although it seems that Google and Microsoft are competing to buy that service so it may have a reprieve. 

In other words, I’m suggesting that what we are seeing is not so much the replacement of old media by new, but the annihilation of both. Marxists have long predicted that capital’s contradictions would undo it and, although I’m hardly optimistic about the prospects of a Red future, it seems like we’re getting a taste of this now. 

 

As I’ve fruitlessly tried to get Technorati to update its listings for this blog, it’s become more apparent that the service is in zombie mode. Like many companies today, Technorati has done away with support personnel in favor of having users try to answer each others’ questions in a discussion forum. But that’s hardly of any use anymore as the forums fill with notes that Technorati doesn’t respond to support tickets. Still, how could they? As the economy tanks, there’s no money for firms with questionable business models like Technorati and the server bills have to be paid before little things like functionality are addressed. 

This is hardly meant as a rant against Technorati. In contrast, it strikes me that the "social Web" is imploding. Over at Newser, MIchael Wollf observes that Facebook’s CFO has left and concludes that "The wheels are coming off the bus at Facebook." Things are no better at Twitter although it seems that Google and Microsoft are competing to buy that service so it may have a reprieve. 

In other words, I’m suggesting that what we are seeing is not so much the replacement of old media by new, but the annihilation of both. Marxists have long predicted that capital’s contradictions would undo it and, although I’m hardly optimistic about the prospects of a Red future, it seems like we’re getting a taste of this now. 

 

2 thoughts on “The Big Nothing”

  1. Profit

    It seems axiomatic that you should create value for yourself by much more value for others (contrast this with the royalty model, which seeks rents at every possible opportunity – even in areas it knew nothing about and did nothing to develop). In other words, an element of pure service seems essential if you’re going to win and maintain public trust. The corollary is that failure to capture enough value for yourself leads to inevitable collapse. In other words, you can’t just give it away. Not all of it, at least. So if you’ve made personal profit either your first or last concern, you’re toast.

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  2. Zombie

    I wonder how far. Given your somewhat digital footprint, I would be interested in seeing if the customer service entity was alerted to your claims. Or perhaps the capacity isn’t even there? As for facebook and the other social web 3.0s, the end game seems to be somewhere between where Wired’s Anderson and his concept of free (due to negligible storage costs etc) economy and a customer created content overload, meet. A economy built on self-created content for virtual and digital consumption. Maybe power costs will soon cost more (introduce more "pricing" instability) than memory/processing costs?

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