Day One in the Twin Cities: MLTC 2008

Congrats to the organizers of MLTC 2008! Macalester College librarian Ron Joslin and his colleagues fine reputation for running successful Minnesotat Innovative User Group events was greatly enhanced last week when about 250 geek librarians spent two days listening to speakers and participating in hands on workshops. Transcripts of meetings can be found on the MLTC Ning site, itself an example of a Web 2.0 application, but I'm going to add a few comments based on my notes.

Computer science professor John Riedl keynoted the conference with a 90 minute talk on "Creating the Social Web." Dr. Riedl, who is definite more patron than librarian, spoke about the Web 2.0 (that's what we mean by "Social Web") characteristics of the 10 (really 13, as he combined a couple) websites. Number one, of course, is Google. Riedl went into some detail about the cat and mouse games between "link farms" and Google's rating system--what establishes the priority of search result displays. Google's system is viral in nature because it allows users to add value to Google's database by making links to other sites. The more links a site has, the greater the priority in search results. This gives rise to the so-called "link farms" which contrive links--for a fee--to sites wishing to sell their wares on the Internet. Google is on the lookout for this practice and regularly pulls their plug--so to speak.

For some reason I didn't take many notes from Riedl's discussion of #2, Yahoo, but did find his discussion of the #3 and #5 sites, Facebook and MySpace (which he combined as #3) fascinating. Both are classic examples of user-added value, with Facebook vaulting past MySpace by opening up its API to allow software writers to add still more functionality, hence value, to the product. Sounds like these sites have become the focus of adolescent bullying. Let's hope that the case of Lori Drew, the 37 year-old mom who bullied 13 year-old Megan Meir into committing suicide by impersonating a 16 year-old boy, Josh Evans, is unsuccessful. If she's convicted, we'll all have to use our real names on the Internet! That's no fun.

YouTube, #4 on Riedl's hit parade, claims to be aimed a providing access to videos by amateurs. However, he points out the obvious: the most popular videos are pirated versions of copyrighted material. YouTube recently settled a lawsuit with CBS by agreeing to let CBS run software against the YouTube database to detect copyrighted materials, for which CBS gets a small payment. A win-win situation. During his discussion of the YouTube phenomenon, Riedl observations about its acquisition by Google may have the key to the whole Web 2.0 concept: Despite having superior web-based video technology, Google spent 1.65 billion dollars to acquire YouTube. Why? Google wanted to acquire the YouTube Community!

The next most popular site, Windows Live at #6, looks like an aggregator for Microsoft's web-based services, such as Hotmail. Hard to believe that it's been 12 years since Bill Gates shut Microsoft down for a week to change the focus of the company from PC-centric to Web-centric. Some of their products have been crude and unnecessarily proprietary, but he clearly saved the company from oblivion.

Number 7? Wikipedia, the ultimate in Wikiality! People are tracking Wikipedia traffic to determine who's adding value (i.e., heavily used content) to the site. Turns out that some guy who goes by Maveric149 has produced 0.5% of the total value of Wikipedia. Amazing. The big threat to Wikipedia? Vandals. Finding and repairing vandalism has become a major headache. Some have speculated that 25,000 librarians, working about 5 minutes a day, could fend off the most serious problems.

Online auction house Ebay comes in at #8 and my beloved Blogger is number 11. Sociologists contend that blogging allows otherwise widely separated people to concentrate into extremist communities. Those bastards!

The leader in online advertisements, Craig's List, is yet another example of the "viral application" concept. All the value is added by the users who have demanded that the site charge $10 per advertisement to keep out the spam. This site is so busy that the owners have been offered $500 million a year to run banner ads on search results. Thus far, they've been satisfied with the paltry $2.5 million they generate from classified sales. The big threat? Local newspapers make a lot of money off of classified advertisements. Online database type services are a lot cheaper and more effective than traditional newsprint. Newspapers are scrambling to get on board the Web based train (just like Gates in 1995?).

Bookseller (and a whole lot more) Amazon is rounds out Riedl's list of top websites. Again, Amazon's greatness comes from its users. They rate the sellers as well as the merchandise. Amazon invites its customers into its store ands asks them for content and advice.

Why are librarians so wary of their users? Are we concerned that we'll lose our traditional status as gatekeepers for information? In my opinion, we should be. Instead of griping about inaccuracies in Wikipedia, we should roll up our sleeves and start fixing it. Same thing with our OPACs. We should list our holdings, then invite patrons (card holders or not) to tag with abandon. Oddly, OCLC is leading the pack with it's Worldcat.org and WorldCat.local products.

The concept of librarians as information hegemons is hopelessly obsolete; we must adapt or wither away.

Key concepts gleaned from Riedl's talk:

• Web 2.0 is people connecting to people via the Internet.
• We're moving to an "always on" society.
• Faster, better and more portable devices are rapidly evolving.
• Building communities is far more difficult (and important) than devising the technology.
• Conclusions of "fact" will rely more on consensus.

The notion of consensus determining fact is eerily reminiscent of post modern literary discussions of the formation of meaning. The coordinated management of meaning predates Web 2.0 applications by thousands of years. The advent of the Internet merely makes it faster and more powerful.

This entry is getting a bit long. I'm going to give it a rest for now and will comment on the Creating and Sharing Local Digital Collections session in another article.