Blab! Blab!...Blab! - Wave

I've just been humbled by the Google Wave Demo which, as big as it may sound, could possible redefine the social web as we know it.

Currently this social web allows me to blab and allows you to blab back.

With Google wave, I will blab and at the same time, you could edit my blab or blab back. The blabs could come from anywhere, be it the wave client or any other blabbing medium such as twitter, facebook and all. We were amazed with an app that allowed us to blab in twitter and update our facebook status at the same time, now get that and make it the norm, and don't even limit it to text, include images, videos, links, documents, etc.

Obviously, to add more colour to the wave project, the wave client can be embedded in any social web tool, making the conversations (Blab!, Blab!...Blab!), the same one, irrelevant of the tool.

In conclusion, who will need websites anyways. Website links will feature in waves and the online widget for that web will feature in the conversation.

Ironically, all this happens in the browser. Would I be wrong to say that once the desktop becomes the browser, the offline content is stored online...then it is a series of waves and blabs...and it is one big thing.

It's late and i am hyped up, so I'll stop here!

If you are geeky enough, spend sometime watching the 1.5hr demo http://wave.google.com/ (I am open to a demo night with lots of popcorn and lots of discussion)

Monday blab: websites and the 5 eras of the social web

I have come across a chart promoting one of Forrester's Research tackling the future of the Social Web. The chart has been sitting on my desktop for quite some time. Over this weekend I have also dedicated sometime to the Razorfish Feed report. The latter is a recommended read for anyone flirting with the 2.0, cutting edge interactive technology or digital overall. It offers brief chapters about anything from the device, to the browser, to the end of the browsing content itself.

In this context I believe the Forrester chart may in the future conflict with the 'Razorfish vision'. Rightly so the Forrester research speaks about the evolution of social WEB and assumes websites will be at the heart of the social web (at least in the above graphical chart). Really and truly though, web sites may soon come to an end. As Kevin Kelly rightly explains, the web of things will replace the web as we know it, away from the screen or standard device. However the chart may not say it all. Finally I managed to find an interview with Jeremiah Owyang which explains the future eras much better than the chart and complements Kelly's vision. The question though remains, will there be any website in 5 years time?

I am posting both videos below:


Kevin Kelly predicts the next 5000 days of the social web


Jeremiah Owyang on the 5 eras of the social web

Countdown to 'The Chaos Scenario'

Read read read! This is what I did not do best lately. Digital is interesting and very powerful, however digital is also very futuristic and as a result highly unclear. August 3 will mark the launch of 'The Chaos Scenario'. The book is written by Bob Garfield.

Quoting from the adage site 'the book documents the converging forces he believes doom mass media and mass marketing as we've always known them. The historic disintegration of "mass," he writes in the introduction, "will change your media environment in dramatic ways. It will change the advertising industry in melodramatic ways."

In the second half of the book, Garfield goes on to discuss what he calls the "art and science of Listenomics," which begins with the recognition that neither marketers nor any other institution accustomed to dictating from the top can do so for much longer. Garfield prescribes a series of measures in the digital-technology and social-media realms for not only listening to the "group formerly known as the audience," but treating them as stakeholders with much to contribute to a brand, and to every aspect of the economy and society.'


More about this at the adage site: http://adage.com/article?article_id=138006

Barclays Fake World: this is worth a sincere blab!

The above ad is the latest ad by Barclays. The ad has made it to Creativity-Online top 5 of this week. The ad reminds me so much of The Truman Show film. The Barclays spot wisely puts the Barclays brand above all other brands in context of the current economic crisis in which big banks caused so much trouble!