Web 2.0 - Is it time for the adults to take back control?

I have read quite a bit lately, and I’m sure you have too, about Web 2.0, the resurgence of the internet based upon user created content. The most often noted example of the perfect web 2.0 website is YouTube, the internet site where anyone can submit their videos for the world to see. YouTube gained so much popularity in fact that Google bought them for more than $1.6 Billion in stock. A huge nuber to be sure, but it is banking on the fact that it can make up more than that in advertising dollars as it has in print advertising. But the problems with the site are also legendary.I can’t say that I am a YouTube junkie myself. In fact, the few times I have been to the site have been from websites or emails directing me to one video or another. Most of them have been informational, but a growing portion of them are intended to be the traditional funny video. By traditional I mean one where someone gets hurt in the permanently horrendous kind of way. You know the kind, “Golfer misses golf ball, hits wife”, “Skateboarder tries to jump rail, looses teeth” and the fast growing “Stupid kid ghostriding car runs over self”.It is the last set of videos here that I consider the last straw. Ghostriding, for those of you who have never heard of such a thing, goes something like this:1. Start your car and let it idle low 2. Step out of car, leave door open 3. Allow car to idle (hopefully slowly) down the road 4. Walk around, over, under or through the car while it travels 5. Take video, or have friends video, your antics This, of course, is where the fun begins. This stupid activity is full of chances for failure. Some of the wonderful things I have seen looking through these clips are: - Stupid kids falling while tryig to get back into their cars, getting run over by the rear wheels - Stupid kids falling off the front of the cars getting run over (often dragged) by the entire car - Stupid kids falling off the back of the car knocking themselves unconscious on the back bumper and having the car roll into a neighbors yard which itself could have been full of kids. - Stupid kids having their car stolen by a passerby as they walk around it (my favorite) leaving them swearing in the street at the expense of their life lesson. - Stupid kids watching helplessly as their now locked car (having exceeded 10MPH and automatically locking) travels down the hill and into the front porch of a very expensive looking new home. The whole point here is this; Should we as a society continue to fund a gigantic machine called the internet when its fastest growing use is to educate people in stupidity. This planetary machine we call the internetconsumes nearly 20 of the world electricity. Do we really need to make it bigger so that advertising companies can drop an ad on the front of “See how stupid I am, visit my at Mercy Hospital” videos?I understand the need for growth as well as peoples need to express themselves. I just wonder if it can’t be done in a bit more cautious environment, maybe with a bit less promotion of crap. Would YouTube have grow as rapidly if it had regulated content? Probably not. Will it take months and millions of dollars for YouTube to fight the copyrighted content lawsuits and clean up its act? Probably. Will advertisers come to their senses and want to seperate themselves from stupid, injury related videos? After a lawsuit or two, they will.So, what’s the alternative? For my money I am betting on the sites that sacrifice growth rate for some level of regulation, especially when it come to podcasting or videos. Sites that form a collaborative group of registered members that are trusted to submit a certain type of content of a known quality are likely to do very well over the long term. By regulating the content they will have a level of consistency and be a know, trusted entity to theur users. I suspect it will take longer to gather content and be a much harder task, but the value to the advertising community should be much higher as well. And no Stupid.My favorite example of this so far is a fairly new site, www.10MinuteLessons.com which is collecting a group of people to record 10 minute (or Less) audio podcasts on a given topic. This has allowed them to attract some great experts so far and I find a lot of the content both informative and entertaining.I don’t know your opinion, but for me I think its high time that the Adults take back control.

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