Web 3.0 Lab: BBC News - How is technology changing protests?

BBC News - How is technology changing protests?: "Technology has always been at the forefront of policing protests, from video cameras, CCTV and now social media. But it is the protesters who are now using technology to their advantage."

Web 3.0 Lab: BBC News - How is technology changing protests?:

How much information does IT produce? Try a number with 19 zeros!

World's information consumption: 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes per year: "The world's roughly 27 million computer servers processed 9.57 zettabytes of information in 2008, according to a paper to be presented April 7 at Storage Networking World's (SNW's) annual meeting in Santa Clara, Calif.
The first-of-its kind rigorous estimate was generated with server-processing performance standards, server-industry reports, interviews with information technology experts, sales figures from server manufacturers and other sources. (One zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power, or a million million gigabytes.)
The study estimated that enterprise server workloads are doubling about every two years, which means that by 2024 the world's enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system in the Milky Way Galaxy. (Each book is assumed to be 4.8 centimeters thick and contain 2.5 megabytes of information.)"

Web 3.0 Lab: The Tablet is mobile, cameras and 3G now becoming ...

Web 3.0 Lab: The Tablet is mobile, cameras and 3G now becoming ...: "Pickup in Lens Orders Points to More Tablets With Cameras - PCWorld Business Center: 'A lot of first-generation tablets didn't feature came..."

This confirms with our own survey of local tablet sales centers in London where staff have told us the ability to attach to the 3G network has become a make or break features for tablet sales. It seems that a tablet must have all the features of a mobile phone and then some, rather than being a half way hybrid between a PC and a mobile phone.

This is good news for the players coming at the tablet space from the mobile side: Android, Apple and potentially Blackberry. This is continued bad news for Microsoft though, as a tablet evolves to be more and more like a mobile phone the strengths of Windows will count for less on the mobile space.

What were are fearing on tablets is people want a camera, they want mobility, they want a camera and video but they don't care to much about productivity and file sharing features. Perhaps as the tablet space expands people will see their potential as productivity tools, but right now they are being seen as big phones rather than mobile PC, and this is very bad news for Microsoft.

Web 3.0 Lab: Cancer Research UK embraces Wikipedia

In a move that shows the emerging importance of Social Media, Cancer Research UK has announced that it will be enhancing Wikipedia pages on cancer. This is because Wikipedia pages come up higher in search than the Cancer Research UK's own web pages. Here is part of the story on BBC:

"Cancer Research UK is turning its specialists loose on the internet to get them to tidy up the online encyclopaedia - wikipedia.

"The charity said many people researching the subject are turning to the website.

"But it said there were problems with accuracy and clarity on some of the pages.

"Wikipedia said it encourages experts to edit the site as they have a lot to contribute.

"Cancer Research UK's website has pages of detail about a range of cancers.

"However, using a search engine for the terms 'Breast Cancer' puts the charity in eighth place on the results page. Wikipedia comes second. A trend it repeats across other cancers."

BBC News - Cancer charity to tidy up wikipedia

Cancer Research UK move illustrates the importance of a two track approach to social network research. Having an excellent authoritative web page is no longer enough. It is critical to engage social media like Wikipedia, blogging, twitter and facebook.

The lesson here is that the line between experts and laymen is no longer respect by the Internet itself. In fact crowd sourced content engines like Wikipedia will dominate search results. Therefore experts, if they really want to get their message out, must work with the community as peers rather than broadcasters.

Web 3.0 Lab: Cancer Research UK embraces Wikipedia:

BBC News - Microsoft takes Google complaint to EU

From the BBC:

"The post goes on to list five different ways in which Google, according to Microsoft, has sought to control the search market.

Those are:

• Using technical measures to stop Microsoft's search engine Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube.
• Blocking Microsoft Smartphones from operating properly with YouTube.
• Controlling access to online copies of out-of-copyright books.
• Limiting the ability of businesses to reclaim "their own information" generated through Google advertising campaigns for use elsewhere.
• Compelling leading websites to only use Google search boxes on their pages.

BBC News - Microsoft takes Google complaint to EU

The idea of Microsoft filing over anti-trust against Google is a sad milestone in the computer giants inability to extend its brand in to the Web. Considering also how ineffective companies were in the 1990s going after Microsoft using this same tactic, it is maybe a bit surprising that Microsoft would try it themselves. But then again if anyone knows about anti-trust litigation it is Microsoft.

I generally view the Microsoft vs Google debate in this way. Both firms are, in their industries monopolies and monopolies are generally bad for consumers. But all monopolies are not created equal. I would rather have a single firm making all the radios than a single firm owning all the radio stations. Monopolies in the content area entail political power that is troubling.

Still it is highly ironic to see Microsoft doing this. And frankly the case looks rather weak at first glance.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs ...

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs to come clean on his work for Libya...:

Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs to be More Honest on Libya:

Opinion Piece

Clay Shirky has some explaining to do about his work with Libya

In 2007 Clay Shirky, guru popularizer and advocate of Web 2.0 technology, addressed his work for Libya in 2007. In a brief blog post on the issue he said:

Over the weekend, Evgeny Morozov asked about my consulting with the Libyan government in 2007. In March of that year, I was invited by Monitor Consulting to come to Boston to speak to a Libyan IT minister about using social software to improve citizen engagement in coastal towns. The idea was that those cities would be more economically successful if local policies related to the tourist trade were designed by the locals themselves.

Clay Shirky on his Consulting Work on Libya

Shirky goes on to admit that he was naive, but one issue remains open: how much money was Shirky paid for the work.

My Shirky may be naive but no one would call him stupid. There is no way in 2007 he did not know that Gaddafi and his regime had carried out a number of terrorist attacks against Americans in Europe. He could not have not known the nature of Gaddafi's regime and that any profit made in the tourist industry, which Shirky claims he had hoped to promote via consulting, would certainly line the pockets of Gaddafi and his forces. At the time Bush and Blair were desperate to make it seem that Gaddafi had changed as a result of the war in Iraq, but I don't think Shirky had any such stake in the war in Iraq and his calculations were likely not as naive as he now claims.

And since 2007 a great deal has been learned about the Monitor Group project. We now know for certain that under the cover of pro-democracy work the Monitor Group was conducting a lucrative PR campaign for Gaddafi with the expressed purpose of raising his profile in the Western world, while doing nothing to promote democracy. Shirky may have not known that in 2007, but he most certainly must now and it would be good to know more details about Skirky's relationship with the Monitor Group.

To be fair we live in a global world where many of us find ourselves in bed with less than honorable partners. The United States finds itself more and more co-dependent and the butchers of Tienanmen Square. We burn oil produced by dictators who don't recognize the fundamental humanity of women or have journalist killed. He impose drug laws we know are destroying communities in South America, we invest in nations we know are destroying old growth forests and wiping out communities and species that live in them.

In the past 30 years the rise of a new free market has also seen the decline in the very idea of daily ethics. In the rush to profit we forget about Tibet, natives of the rain forests, women of Saudi Arabia, journalists in Russia, democrats in China, and even the poor in our own nations. America has even seen a political movement with no other purpose than to continue to deny health coverage to 30,000,000 people. Moral goodness has clearly stopped being much of a force in our day to day lives.

Its not that Capitalism is innately evil: its only that are often innately humans evil. Or maybe just innately lazy about their moral principles. Or just innately careless.

But more important than wikis and blogs to building a better future is our ability to see when we have made a grave error. We are rich in technology but poor in humility. Clay Shirky's avoidance of stating how much he profited from work with Libya makes his entire defense of the power of Web technology to promote human development seem hallow.

One thing the cyber-community has proven itself to be is fickle. If Shirky does not come clean soon about the extent of his revenues off work with Libya he might find himself sharing a virtual dog house with Julian Assange.

There are plenty of people in Tunisia and Egypt who actually have used the Internet to change their society, and I think we would all rather read books by people we can feel confident are real heroes.

Robert Hooker

UPDATE: After doing some more research it is now pretty obvious that Shirky is almost certainly down playing his work for the government of Libya under Gaddafi, that or until this year he was playing it up for some reason. In also every bio we can find of him on blogs, and his profile on Amazon. In fact on his Amazon profile Libya is the only government mentioned.

Now if he had only had one meeting with the government of Libya and, as he claims, he resulted in nothing, why was he mentioning the government of Libya again and again in his work after that time?

Its hard to escape the conclusion that Mr Sharky was part of the Monitor Groups efforts to raise the status of Gaddafi and Libya, that he was repeatedly speaking about this work to lend his own status as a Internet Utopian to the regime in Tripoli. The extent to which Shirky was working his experience with Libya in to articles. For example when a article is titled “Social production is the great opportunity of our age,” says web maven Clay Shirky and then goes on to mention Clay Shirky's work for Libya in the first paragraph there is a clear giving to Libya the prestige of the article itself. When his Amazon page for Cognitive Surplus also mentions his work in Libya we can only conclude that he was not just involved in one off with Libya IT in the hopes of doing something good, but was using Monitor group to profit off his reputation by selling it to Libya.

This is much more than the moral compromises many of us need to make to play the bills, it looks more and more as a well thought out plan to profit by associating his extremely optimistic ideas about technology with the ruthless regime of Libya, and the only motivation could have been profit.

Clearly Shirky is now too morally compromised to serve as an effective spokesman for the cyber-dissident movement. Perhaps he should take some of the money he made with Monitor group and take a nice long vacation. Hopefully NYU will carry out a full investigation of the ethics of their professor in this matter.

Web 3.0 Lab: Tokyo Twitter Density

Web 3.0 Lab: Tokyo Twitter Density:

Tokyo is one of the most dense locations for geo-tweeting on the planet. Tokyo, London, Amsterdam and New York see some of the highest usage of twitter on the planet. In these cities, and many others, twitter flexibility and simplicity is making it the ideal Web 3.0 tool. Not only can people quickly access information from contacts or on subjects from anywhere, and many people are deciding to give geo-position with their tweets.

What we are seeing is a rapid uptake of geo-tagged tweets coming from the major cities, producing a continue flow of real time information about what is happening on the group in major cities. Some people even view these as the thoughts of a collective intelligence of the cities, but we find that way to Science Fiction.

But the potentials both positive and negative of such a crowd sourced flow of information are amazing. On one had it offers one of the most extensive form of monitoring and Surveillance, but also a instrument of collective culture creative, consumer knowledge sharing and democratic organization.

One thing is certain, the consumers have embraced the production of geo-tagged information in a way that would have been unimaginable just five years ago, and the trend looks only likely to continue.

Where there are Clouds there is Rain

We have probably all heard the wonders of Cloud computing from pre-sales teams. Cloud computing will reduce energy consumption, reduce costs, improve innovation, and all kinds of other things.

Well over the past two years I have seen a number of Cloud projects at various orgnaizations, and none have worked out as intended.

My impressionis that the Cloud is being way way oversold. Why? Because even though the Cloud makes sense to IT providers and outsourcing firms as a way to potentially increase profit, there are no real benefits to most clients. In fact working with the cloud, especially the current Microsoft Stack in the Cloud produces complex issues around security, access control, sign off, and boundaries of responsibility that significantly slow down project deployments. Clients generally find themselves waiting much long for a Cloud solution than they would have a simple data center.

This is not to say that the Cloud is dead, it certainly is not. But I have restrained my expectations for what the Cloud can offer a great deal in the last year. The key problem is security. Generally the requirements for security in a Cloud solution handcuff the solution and make it almost impossible to move forward.

The Cloud has read head first in to IT's dirty little secret. In data centers we generally put the software in and spend the weekend before fixing all the mistakes we made. If we have direct access to the boxes we might be able to meet our deadlines. IT projects are still riddled with mistakes, oversights, and miscommunication between parties and players. That is simply the nature of complex projects in technologies changing all the time. Having a single data center helps to resolve many of these issues at the last minute.

But the Cloud often isolates the production environment from the people who can make it work. Software is deployed in to solutions beyond the deployment teams control. The inability to "pound it with a hammer" at the last minute has bogged a number of projects in endless efforts to document everything before hand. I am seeing very basic projects now producing hundreds of pages of documentation which consumes months of work.

So far I have yet to see a Cloud project that did not take at least 5 times as long as a traditional data center project. My hunch is that unless a set of Out of the Box Cloud services are soon developed and sold at lower cost than software licenses, cost conscious consumers will simply return to what worked in the past: installing software on servers. As server become cheaper, faster and more powerful and as SharePoint becomes more and more the standard office management system it will actually become easier to keep IT in house. And what I am seeing now is that there is a strong movement in that direction.

I am not prepared to say the Cloud has failed, only failed to be the miracle it was promising.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial W...

Doing a search on the term "Web 3.0" will first and foremost take you to a large number of articles talking about the Semantic Web. Google searches on Web 3.0 resolves to Wikipedia article on the Semantic Web.

gayed Ahmed Tarek

Finally, Semantic web became such a failure that they called whatever is going on now 2.0 and semantic web should be 3.0.#geektweet

1 hour ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

Semantic Web is a concept that has been around about as long as XML and even HTML. The idea is that a new way to write data to the web will be created that will make it easier for a single user to find precisely the data they want.

The most common architectural framework we is Resource Description Framework or RDF. RDF aims to code data in statements of three terms in a relationship. A classic subject object predict kind of solution. A large group of these "triplets" creates a "triplestore". The notion is that a large triplestore will be able to draw conclusions beyond the data encoded.

For example you might have a triplestore with the following facts encoded:

• Coen Brothers directed True Grit (2010)
• Jeff Bridges stared in True Grit (2010)
• Bob Hooker did not see True Grit (2010)
• Bob Hooker saw Tron Legacy
• Jess Bridges stared in Tron Legacy
• Tron Legacy was released in 2010
• True Grit (2010) was released in 2010

Demos systems like this can then draw inspiring conclusions like Coen Brothers and Jeff Bridges worked together on a movie that came out in 2010 but Bob Hooker did not see it, but Bob Hooker did see a movie staring Jeff Bridges.

Okay well maybe something a bit more useful could come from it, the idea is the same.

As long as you pretty much know what you want to come out of a triplestore and build it correctly you can conclude fairly obvious things. If a triplestore has cured anything or come up with any theory yet we have not heard of it.

If the Semantic Web will someday scale up to actually being useful is a open question. It would be really cool if it did. But if it works or not it is to a central part of the changes that are going on it the web that can be meaningfully called Web 3.0.

We suspect Semantic Web will keep trying to be part of some future web event, and that it will be being pushed as a core part of Web 4.0. The idea of automated "thinking"has been the Holy Grail of Computer Science from before most people could access a computer, and will probably always be an attractive idea to computer researchers if not consumers.

What tend to define Web 3.0 as not semantic, but rather the extension of the Web 1.0 (content) and Web 2.0 (Social Graph) into the spatial domain. Web 3.0 web content and social nodes are both tagged with spatial relationships and able to form social relationships based on current location.

But more than that, Web 3.0 means that users have access to the Web just about where ever and whenever. Web 1.o answer what, Web 2.0 answer who, and Web 2.0 will answer where.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

View more presentations from Total Social Media

For use the key technology change that makes Web 3.0 a distinct and revolutionary phase in the evolution of the Web is the fact that the Internet is now with the user all the time. The line that broke in the world form online has been broken.

Just a few years ago a common way to insult people who posted online was to say they "should get a life" or "should get out more", but today people are posting on twitter on trains to work, while waiting in bars for friends, or from lounges of museums. Foursquare, Facebook places and Gowalla extent the activity of being online to the activity getting out and about in the real world.

This ability to do while you surf, to consume and produce content anywhere has changed radically the nature of the user experience of the Internet. It is this change in the lived experience of the Internet that makes the term Web 3.0 useful.

The change does not require the Semantic Web, nor would the Semantic Web cause this change. So we tend to see the Semantic Web as independent of the key event that we call web 3.0.

Web 1.0 put people in contact with a great deal of information. The stereo type of a Web 1.0 geek is someone consuming masses of pointless data pieces while not in social engagement. The truth is though there never was a Web 1.0, people who used the web a great deal would find forms like Usenet for form community on. People have always viewed the Internet as a social experience first and foremost.

Web 2.0 expanded the ability of people to join and form community online for just chat groups to Social Graphs. Web 2.0 stereotype geek is someone who lives their entire social life from their bedroom or Starbucks. A "Web 2.0 geek" has lots and lots of friends on Facebook but never goes out. This was very empowering for people disabled people who could not leave the house, but it tended to make the focus of social interaction the bedroom or study.

Web 3.0 takes the web in to the world. A Web 3.0 geek is someone who can't make eye contact because they are glued to their blackberry or iPhone all the time. They are online all the time, never more than a few minutes from checking their twitter account.

A more positive way to think about it would be:

Web 1.0 is reading about a protests on a group's web site before hand, going to it, and going home and looking information on the web about it in the news the next morning.

Web 2.0 is learning about a protest on Facebook, seeing the people who are going to go, IMing to people who will go on from you Social Graph, going to it, coming home and posting images to your blog or Facebook page that night.

Web 3.0 is learning where a surprise protest is going to meet 10 minutes before it happens on your blackberry, video tapping it on your iPhone and posting tweets and images on your phone from the event, reading the Facebook entries on the way home and once you get back not even bothering with you PC because you already know everything and are too tired. Rather watch TV while tweeting on your android.

This mobilization of the Internet experience has nothing to do with the Semantic web, it is entirely independent of it. The mobile post-PC Internet (with is the third wave or Web 3.0) will happen without Semantic Web like meaning, and Semantic Web like meaning, if it is possible, could happen without adding mobility to the Internet.

We at the Web 3.0 Lab thing that by adding more spatial dimensions you will get improved semantic understanding. Much of our social understanding is spatial. Reasoning that some people hope to get out of triplestores we think will emerge out of geo-tagging of information. Spatial arrangements of data will drive interesting conclusions about how that data relates to the real world, how it is used, and therefore what it means.

The Web 3.0 Lab has a working model of meaning that is a bit different than what the Semantic Web assumes. While the Semantic Web sees data as meaning what it is about, or what it captures or contains, we seeing the meaning of data coming from how it is used. We feel that this is a more mature understanding of language evolved over the past decades by linguist and social scientists.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial Web

Fast Selling Device of All Time, From Microsoft

Kinect controller">

"Microsoft has sold more than 10 million Kinect sensor systems since launch on 4 November, and - according to Guinness World Records - is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device on record.

"The sales figures outstrip those of both Apple's iPhone and iPad when launched, Guinness said.

"Kinect is an infrared camera add-on for Microsoft's Xbox 360 games console that allows it to track body movements."

BBC News - Microsoft Kinect 'fastest-selling device on record'

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial W...

Doing a search on the term "Web 3.0" will first and foremost take you to a large number of articles talking about the Semantic Web. Google searches on Web 3.0 resolves to Wikipedia article on the Semantic Web.

Semantic Web is a concept that has been around about as long as XML and even HTML. The idea is that a new way to write data to the web will be created that will make it easier for a single user to find precisely the data they want.

The most common architectural framework we is Resource Description Framework or RDF. RDF aims to code data in statements of three terms in a relationship. A classic subject object predict kind of solution. A large group of these "triplets" creates a "triplestore". The notion is that a large triplestore will be able to draw conclusions beyond the data encoded.

For example you might have a triplestore with the following facts encoded:

• Coen Brothers directed True Grit (2010)
• Jeff Bridges stared in True Grit (2010)
• Bob Hooker did not see True Grit (2010)
• Bob Hooker saw Tron Legacy
• Jess Bridges stared in Tron Legacy
• Tron Legacy was released in 2010
• True Grit (2010) was released in 2010

Demos systems like this can then draw inspiring conclusions like Coen Brothers and Jeff Bridges worked together on a movie that came out in 2010 but Bob Hooker did not see it, but Bob Hooker did see a movie staring Jeff Bridges.

Okay well maybe something a bit more useful could come from it, the idea is the same.

As long as you pretty much know what you want to come out of a triplestore and build it correctly you can conclude fairly obvious things. If a triplestore has cured anything or come up with any theory yet we have not heard of it.

If the Semantic Web will someday scale up to actually being useful is a open question. It would be really cool if it did. But if it works or not it is to a central part of the changes that are going on it the web that can be meaningfully called Web 3.0.

We suspect Semantic Web will keep trying to be part of some future web event, and that it will be being pushed as a core part of Web 4.0. The idea of automated "thinking"has been the Holy Grail of Computer Science from before most people could access a computer, and will probably always be an attractive idea to computer researchers if not consumers.

What tend to define Web 3.0 as not semantic, but rather the extension of the Web 1.0 (content) and Web 2.0 (Social Graph) into the spatial domain. Web 3.0 web content and social nodes are both tagged with spatial relationships and able to form social relationships based on current location.

But more than that, Web 3.0 means that users have access to the Web just about where ever and whenever. Web 1.o answer what, Web 2.0 answer who, and Web 2.0 will answer where.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

View more presentations from Total Social Media

For use the key technology change that makes Web 3.0 a distinct and revolutionary phase in the evolution of the Web is the fact that the Internet is now with the user all the time. The line that broke in the world form online has been broken.

Just a few years ago a common way to insult people who posted online was to say they "should get a life" or "should get out more", but today people are posting on twitter on trains to work, while waiting in bars for friends, or from lounges of museums. Foursquare, Facebook places and Gowalla extent the activity of being online to the activity getting out and about in the real world.

This ability to do while you surf, to consume and produce content anywhere has changed radically the nature of the user experience of the Internet. It is this change in the lived experience of the Internet that makes the term Web 3.0 useful.

The change does not require the Semantic Web, nor would the Semantic Web cause this change. So we tend to see the Semantic Web as independent of the key event that we call web 3.0.

Web 1.0 put people in contact with a great deal of information. The stereo type of a Web 1.0 geek is someone consuming masses of pointless data pieces while not in social engagement. The truth is though there never was a Web 1.0, people who used the web a great deal would find forms like Usenet for form community on. People have always viewed the Internet as a social experience first and foremost.

Web 2.0 expanded the ability of people to join and form community online for just chat groups to Social Graphs. Web 2.0 stereotype geek is someone who lives their entire social life from their bedroom or Starbucks. A "Web 2.0 geek" has lots and lots of friends on Facebook but never goes out. This was very empowering for people disabled people who could not leave the house, but it tended to make the focus of social interaction the bedroom or study.

Web 3.0 takes the web in to the world. A Web 3.0 geek is someone who can't make eye contact because they are glued to their blackberry or iPhone all the time. They are online all the time, never more than a few minutes from checking their twitter account.

A more positive way to think about it would be:

Web 1.0 is reading about a protests on a group's web site before hand, going to it, and going home and looking information on the web about it in the news the next morning.

Web 2.0 is learning about a protest on Facebook, seeing the people who are going to go, IMing to people who will go on from you Social Graph, going to it, coming home and posting images to your blog or Facebook page that night.

Web 3.0 is learning where a surprise protest is going to meet 10 minutes before it happens on your blackberry, video tapping it on your iPhone and posting tweets and images on your phone from the event, reading the Facebook entries on the way home and once you get back not even bothering with you PC because you already know everything and are too tired. Rather watch TV while tweeting on your android.

This mobilization of the Internet experience has nothing to do with the Semantic web, it is entirely independent of it. The mobile post-PC Internet (with is the third wave or Web 3.0) will happen without Semantic Web like meaning, and Semantic Web like meaning, if it is possible, could happen without adding mobility to the Internet.

We at the Web 3.0 Lab thing that by adding more spatial dimensions you will get improved semantic understanding. Much of our social understanding is spatial. Reasoning that some people hope to get out of triplestores we think will emerge out of geo-tagging of information. Spatial arrangements of data will drive interesting conclusions about how that data relates to the real world, how it is used, and therefore what it means.

The Web 3.0 Lab has a working model of meaning that is a bit different than what the Semantic Web assumes. While the Semantic Web sees data as meaning what it is about, or what it captures or contains, we seeing the meaning of data coming from how it is used. We feel that this is a more mature understanding of language evolved over the past decades by linguist and social scientists.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial Web

Web 3.0 Lab focus on the BRICs: Web 3.0 Lab focus on BRICs: Social Network and Web...

Social Network and Web 3.0 services has a large presence in Russia, the fourth largest Social Network market in Europe.

The Web 3.0 Lab has taken a look at on the ground tweeting in Russia for some time. Using our twitter analysis tool we looked at Moscow which is a major center for geolocated tweeting with a score on our scale of 85 to at 20:00 GMT. At that same time St Petersburg, tweeps intensity was 54 This compared to Berlin is a low area for geolocated tweets with a score of 66 0n the same scale. But for BRIC this level of Web 3.0 activity is not that impressive. At that time Mumbai 59 out of 100 twitter intensity. In Brazil, entering the evening, the score was Sao Paulo had high tweeting at 78. The conclusion is that Russia is very much part of a truly global internet, and Social Networks could exert a power use as a media. Over evaluation of overallgeo-tagged web activity and data is 53 for Moscow center on our Clima scale.

But unlike Brazil and India few in Russia would probably argue that it is a working democracy, and though India and Brazil have their problems, given the authoritarian nature of Putin's rule of Russia is more likely to face grass roots call for Regime reform.

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

Russia has had some harsh criticism of Google and has threatened to review it's internet policy, which they say would be modelled more on China's tightly controlled censorship. Will it be watching you more than you watching the internet?

Although right now Russia has a very open internet culture, even Medvedev has a video blog- http://blog.kremlin.ru/ . In the last few days there have been strong condenation from Medvedev and Putin about the effects of Google. We have some information about Russian social networks from The Fresh Network who has followed Russia and its active social network.

"The January Web Index for TNS shows that two leading social networks in Russia are witnessing the kind of acceleration in growth that we have seen in other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

One of the main social networks in Russia, Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники) is reporting 30 million registered users. The site, which (as the name suggests) connects classmates is used in both Russia and the Ukraine and attracts 8 million visitors each day. VKontakte (В контакте) is Odnoklassniki’s biggest competitor with a reported 28 million registered users and 1.4 billion page views each day and 13.09 million visitors each month.

These statistics are impressive and firmly place Russia as the fourth biggest market in Europe for social networking. The total number of users of both of these sites is remarkable given that in 2008, Russia’s overall internet population was reported to be just 33 million people. It is true that internet access is increasing rapidly in Russia, and the growth of social networks is accompanying this. When people go online for the first time they appear to be joining and using social networks almost immediately."

Sounrce:

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab focus on BRICs: Social Network