Category: Web

Social networks as anti-depressants

Published on by Yakov FainLeave a comment

Most of the innovations in software come from the USA. The best software products are created in the US. The most popular social networks were invented in the US. Harvard’s most popular course is “How to be Happy”.

So what?

Everyone has some form of depression. More and more people spend more and more time in FaceBook, Twitter and the like. More and more people are looking for a virtual safety net. Small portion of the users of these networks are there either for business reasons or looking for sex partners. The vast majority of the users of these networks who are older than 22 years old are suffering serious form of depression without realizing this.

Billy Joel sang “It’s better than drinking alone …”

Social networks are hugely popular in the US. This hurt Prozac sales. If Twitter and FaceBook were not invented, American citizens would be buying more anti-depressants.

God bless America!

I have no idea what Web 2.0 means

Published on by Yakov Fain2 Comments

The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’Reilly a couple of years ago. Up till today, I am not sure what does it mean.

My favorite definition is this: “A Web page can be called 2.0 if all its buttons have round corners “.

If you have 24 minutes to kill, watch this video published by TechCrunch.com where participants are trying to figure out what Web 2.0 means and if this is a bubble or not. At least I watched it during my today’s morning commute. This video was produced in a pretty amaturish way though. The interviewer have met these people at different times and then cut pieces from these meetings and glued them in a random order. The green background is used in video production for adding some real backdrops. Producers of this video did not bother to make it prettier. This is definitely not a Web Video 2.0.

I’m not even an inch closer to understanding of what the Web 2.0 is, but I like the 2.0 suffix, which can be applied to anything. For example, registration 2.0, TV 2.0, sex 2.0. Just be creative! Microsoft is leading this branding trend , and they’ve renamed WinFX into .Net Framework 3.0, because by the time Vista will be released, 2.0 will sound antique.

Categories Web