YOU - The Person of the Year


Who is the Time 'Person of the Year' this time? It is 'YOU' screams the Time Magazine cover which has honoured as its Person of the Year in its upcoming year-end issue with a cover featuring a piece of mylar, mirroring the face of the reader and saying
"Yes you.
You control the Information Age.
Welcome to your world
"

An apt testimony to the Web 2.0 age that has evolved with people as its central pillar of growth. Give people what they want and they will give back to you the power of the masses, the power to hold sway over huge swathes of humans spread across the nations. This seems to be the sole driving force behind Web 2.0 applications. Be it video sharing sites like YouTube, MetaCafe or social networking sites like Orkut, Friendster, MySpace or Blogging sites like Blogspot, Yahoo 360, LiveJournal or shopping sites like Ebay, Amazon or bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble the common streak across all of them is the driving force that has sustained them - People Power.

People create content, upload content, publish content, get content rated by other people and move up and down the popularity scale inducing more/less people view their content in turn. The net is truly turning democratic in nature. It is content 'of the people, by the people and for the people'.

What this also translates to, is the overwhelming power, that this spread out mass of people can exert on governments, public and private organizations. An example would be the kind of vocal protests over the Internet by a few hundred Indian bloggers a few months back, when the government closed down access to key blogging sites. The protests drew support from international bloggers who highlighted the episode and the government had to back down and restore access to the sites within 72 hours.

Truly, Internet is a better medium today for millions who want to express their feelings, their opinions, their talent and reach out to like minded individuals across the globe. Web 2.0 apps have provided the right platform for this and 'YOU & I' are making it possible.

Related Links : Mankind's Epoch Journey via Internet

Comments

Anonymous said…
wonderful! maybe we are coming of age, as a society