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Web 2.0
| Date: |
02 March 2008 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Barbara Fölscher
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| Presenter: |
John Webb
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Rafiq Philips: "There's always someone up. That's the cool thing, there's always company online. Usually at night I say, Hi, who's awake?' You get responses, one from London, one from California, one from Florida. My phone basically lives next to my bed and when I wake up the first thing I usually do, before I go to the toilet, is check my mail. If there's anything urgent that needs to be handled. The next thing would be to greet the people, on Twitter or on Google Talk, and say good morning to friends and co-workers. I'm always connected, always."
John Webb (Carte Blanche presenter): "Rafiq Philips, on the face of it, an ordinary young man living on an ordinary street in Cape Town. But that's in the world that we see. In the parallel universe of cyberspace, Rafiq is known as a guru, and his habits point to a fundamental change in society. Rafiq is one of the drivers of the Web 2.0 Revolution. But what exactly is this revolution that is gaining force all around us?"
Web 2.0 sees the Internet as a platform for interaction and social networking. Anyone with an Internet connection can now be a publisher, a journalist or an advertiser. The phenomenal rise of networks such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace gives anybody a potential audience of millions. Some say the change to our society is as fundamental as the invention of the printing press. To Rafiq online communication has become more natural than talking.
Rafiq: "It's continuous, it's always happening. Someone is always asking you a question or asking you to send them an email. You're always communicating. It's not just like stuck in work and sealed off from the rest of it because you're always connected. In the office here, if you need anything, like let's go for lunch, you send them a message."
John: "And you don't find it strange that you don't actually get up and walk across the room to talk to somebody."
Rafiq: "Strange, how strange? That's the only way I've been doing it, ever. I don't know any other way."
Today he invites two colleagues to meet at a cafè with free Internet access. Hours later the meeting takes place, partly face-to-face, partly via laptops and cellphones. Rafiq has his own online business, writes a successful blog and works at an e-marketing company. He has won several awards for his work.
Rafiq: "I help clients or companies to be found on search engines for the products they offer."
In a world where over 6 000 Google searches are performed every second, that's a useful skill to have. In true Web 2.0 style, Rafiq posts a photograph of the meeting on the Web, friends respond, business contacts contribute and so it continues.
But what has this done to the old world', to traditional sources of news and communication? Some say today's seven-year-olds will never read a printed newspaper.
The country's largest media company, Naspers, is changing radically to adapt to the market. Arrie Rossouw, a former newspaper editor, has made the switch to digital.
Arrie Rossouw (Editorial Director: MHI Digital Africa): "The user is in control, more than ever before. They actually decide what they want to read, when they want to read it, how they want to consume media content."
Rafiq: "The news I want comes to me, I don't want to know about people taking showers. There's specific news that I'm interested in. When I get home at night and my Dad is reading the paper and I'm like, why is it so familiar?' But then I realise as it happened or the news is released I get it on my phone or on my feed reader. When the news gets published its old news."
Arrie: "We compete actually with Facebook and YouTube and MySpace. We compete with the Googles of this world. What we've learnt in a very short time, you have to be open to changes. Because what you've planned now, if you can't deliver that within three months, you've almost missed the boat. If you wait too long someone else comes along sitting in his garage or study somewhere and comes up with a neat new product, people talk about the new product, it gets traction and there you go."
But people do not only go to the Net for news and information. More and more people prefer to shop online. Rafiq's blog, which is a combination of an online diary, publishing platform and business tool, attracts thousands of new visitors every day. What is said about a brand or product on a blog like this is very influential.
John: "Web 2.0 is changing economies and mindsets. Its forces have the power to make or break companies within the space of a couple of hours. All over the world universities and business schools have recognised the urgent need to understand and navigate this new environment. Here at the Graduate School of Business in Cape Town, new collaborative ways of thinking and creativity are being introduced."
Dave Duarte advises big business and lectures at the GSB and elsewhere on the new' economy.
Dave Duarte (Lecturer - Graduate School of Business): "The pace of change now is not only unforeseen, it is unmanageable. So we've got so much stuff coming at us, the expectation for us to keep up with it is not really realistic. We've got to make choices and people like me help people to make the right choices."
John: "How much of a problem is it if businesses don't respond to these huge changes in the environment?"
Dave: "I think part of the big problem with companies who've got it wrong is that they saw an emergent crisis and they took it back to the boardroom. They discussed it and they formulated a strategy by which time the problem had morphed into completely something else. There will be a blogger who's connected and word will go to other bloggers and the inevitable result could be that over a few months a listed company can lose six percent of its share value."
John: "Would I be accurate in saying that South Africa is one step behind?"
Dave: "In some regards, yes, sure, we've got a horribly low rate of broadband penetration. But in regards to the mobile Internet and mobile applications, we are strides ahead to the rest of the world and we're doing stuff which isn't even seen there yet."
Never before have ordinary people as users or consumers had more power. A real shift of knowledge and power is taking place, followed closely by a shift in the lines of wealth.
The advertising world is reeling from the effects of the digital revolution. Senior advertising executive Gail Curtis says the industry will have to change radically if it is going to survive.
Gail Curtis (CEO Saatchi & Saatchi SA): "You can't just throw your budget out and hope you're going to get your consumer like we did before. It's about how you're going to get them to interact, that is becoming really, really crucial. It's: What's in it for me?'"
Interactive, personalised marketing means that people play with brands to create their own online identities. They choose features, they vote for products and take part in competitions - all of it feeding into the consumer's need to feel noticed and unique.
Rafiq: "What this technology enables us to do is it puts you in the centre. It's like you become more important. It's not about what everybody else thinks, it's about what you think and what you can do with it, because it's now focused on a market of one."
Gail: "The consumer is actually asking us, Tell me what it is you want me to know about your product'. As opposed to, Don't talk to me in a way that you think that I want to be spoken to because I can switch off very, very quickly to something else that is more exciting and more fun'. What the new generation is doing and particularly the youth market, they're doing their homework, they're talking on the mobile phone they're playing games and they're watching TV. So they're multitasking and working very, very quickly.
Rafiq: "Continuous partial attention, that's what it's about, because you're always busy with something."
The communication and social habits of an entire society are changing. In the US one out of eight couples getting married met online. Locally the trend is also increasing. Bradley Voges met his German fiancèe Elena on a South African social website.
Bradley Voges: "I saw her profile because I have a profile on the website as well. And so I contacted her and we started chatting on the site and we sent each other a couple of photographs and we started meeting each other in chatrooms."
Elena: "You never really know, is it a 25-year-old guy or is it a whatever 45-year-old guy who wants to meet with you for a drink. I'm always a little bit careful with that but it turned out just fine."
Bradley and Elena are getting married, but the inherent problems of too much personal information on the Web have been well documented, especially for younger users who fall prey to sexual predators. What has been less well documented is the psychological and cultural impact of a generation growing up communicating on screens.
Gail: "I think we do have to take care that they don't disconnect. Technology is there for ultimate connectivity. They sit on the beach and they don't swim, they're too busy smsing each other. They date one another and they haven't met each other. It's through pictures and smsing. You can say things via sms that you won't necessarily say to someone if you are looking across the room."
No one knows where the rapid development of the Internet is leading us. All we know is that the pace of change has exceeded our ability to keep up, plan and interpret its impact. We also know that the divide between those who are plugged in and those who are not, is widening.
Rafiq: "If you don't catch up, you're going to be left behind because the world is changing, or it has changed already. People need to plug in and continue."
John: "Web 2.0 may be changing the world in which we live, but I can't imagine a Sunday without the feel of the morning papers between my fingers. It may be old news when compared to what is available on the Internet, but at least its read in a world that I can touch and taste and smell."
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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