Now, maybe I have lived in my own little world, secluded from technical inventions, but until this week I had never – to my recollection – heard the term ‘Web 2.0’. Wikipedia’ing it led me to realize that even if I hadn’t come across the term before, I have used many applications that would fall under this category (and the fact that I used one of the top web 2.0 applications for finding this information was rather funny).
One of my first contacts with the web 2.0, according to the Wikipedia definition, was on Amazon. The feature I’m talking about is really basic, the ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ one. Calling it a web 2.0 feature may be pushing it, as it is pretty old by now, but it fits the description.
So, what would be the problem with this function? Well, to start with, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it at all. Sure, companies make a lot of money by using information about my preferences if I buy something from them, which means they are saving information about me (whether that information is linked to my customer ID or not).
But really, how much do I care about that on a personal level. In fact, it’s probably worth it to be able to easily access for example other books by the same author without doing a new search. On my favourite shopping site, Asos, I have more than once found nice stuff by looking at those recommendations. If I find a nice top, it’s often linked to matching jewellery, or at the very least there’s a good chance of me liking at least some of the suggested items.
But there is a less obvious downside to this as well. If we use those recommendations to a large extent in many aspects of our lives, things might get very boring. If you watch a movie you like, and use Imdb or any other movie site to recommend movies like it, or Allmusic to find music, you might find things that you like. But the better those sites are at recommending things that are very close to what you already like, the less you will be exposed to new influences. It might be exaggerating, but functions like these could make us more predictable and boring.
If you talk about clothes or movies, the risk of you staying with what you like from before might not change drastically with the suggestion function. However, if you used a similar function for looking for political blogs, for example, you could get into the situation of never really hearing some other perspective of the world other that that of you and people who agree with you. And then we kind of lose a point with what blogs could be, and will never really get our thoughts and ideas challenged.
One of my first contacts with the web 2.0, according to the Wikipedia definition, was on Amazon. The feature I’m talking about is really basic, the ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ one. Calling it a web 2.0 feature may be pushing it, as it is pretty old by now, but it fits the description.
So, what would be the problem with this function? Well, to start with, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it at all. Sure, companies make a lot of money by using information about my preferences if I buy something from them, which means they are saving information about me (whether that information is linked to my customer ID or not).
But really, how much do I care about that on a personal level. In fact, it’s probably worth it to be able to easily access for example other books by the same author without doing a new search. On my favourite shopping site, Asos, I have more than once found nice stuff by looking at those recommendations. If I find a nice top, it’s often linked to matching jewellery, or at the very least there’s a good chance of me liking at least some of the suggested items.
But there is a less obvious downside to this as well. If we use those recommendations to a large extent in many aspects of our lives, things might get very boring. If you watch a movie you like, and use Imdb or any other movie site to recommend movies like it, or Allmusic to find music, you might find things that you like. But the better those sites are at recommending things that are very close to what you already like, the less you will be exposed to new influences. It might be exaggerating, but functions like these could make us more predictable and boring.
If you talk about clothes or movies, the risk of you staying with what you like from before might not change drastically with the suggestion function. However, if you used a similar function for looking for political blogs, for example, you could get into the situation of never really hearing some other perspective of the world other that that of you and people who agree with you. And then we kind of lose a point with what blogs could be, and will never really get our thoughts and ideas challenged.
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