Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Torture by Information Overload
Now that the first burst of enthusiasm for social networking has died, people are realizing that web 2.0 is actually a huge time sink. — Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plaxo may have helped foster community and communication …
Context & Ripple Effects
Skepticism about Web 2.0's excesses had surfaced as early as the first signs of cracks in Web 2.0 and sharpened in 2007's critique of the sector's self-promotion. The Expo preview places that backlash with users: maintaining several social services is being treated as work rather than effortless connection.
The concern lands as Facebook's platform shows uneven utility for SMS applications, while Twitter has faced delivery failures and criticism over its communication during outages. Attention costs make those product and reliability shortcomings more consequential.
First-order effects
- Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plaxo face greater pressure to justify the time users spend monitoring and updating their services, rather than relying on novelty and network participation alone.
- Twitter's missed updates and direct messages turn an information-overload complaint into a service-trust problem: users cannot efficiently follow a stream that does not reliably deliver messages.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's advertisers face a harder task converting social attention into value when users see targeting as irrelevant and the service as a distraction; engagement quality becomes as important as audience scale.
- Developers building Facebook SMS applications face a narrower market if users regard additional social notifications as clutter rather than a useful extension of the platform.
Third-order effects
- If users continue to ration attention across social services, Web 2.0 competition will shift from accumulating features and contacts toward helping people decide what deserves their time.
- The pattern points to a broader correction in Web 2.0 expectations: network growth alone is not a durable measure of usefulness when service reliability, relevance and attention burden conflict.
The trend: Social networking is moving from enthusiasm about participation toward a test of whether platforms can deliver relevant, reliable communication without overwhelming users.