And therein lies the real problem of web 2.0 — whether it takes the form of SEO-driven “news” or crowd-sourced accommodation. To make money — real money — at this game you have to attract millions, or tens of millions, of users. And when you’re dealing with those kinds of numbers, it’s literally impossible not to treat your users as pieces of data. It’s ironic, but depressingly unsurprising, that web 2.0 is using faux socialization and democratization to create a world where everyone is reduced to a number on a spreadsheet.
via techcrunch.com
Great read on Techcrunch.com by Paul Carr. It's a indictment without solution, for certain, but still a great read and very uncharacteristic of what Techcrunch has recently become.
There has to be some middle ground between building communities and building businesses. The old media industry did it well in my opinion. There was a sense of responsibility in the old newspaper industry that is substantially void in this "democratization" that is falsely fueling Web 2.0.
