Exploration #9: What's Next and Looking Back

Wow. I never thought I could get this far. Web 2.0 explorations were interesting, challenging and frustrating in various degrees. I started with setting up the blog, segued to Flickr, which was fun to look at, although I chose not to post. Goodreads was next. I've been interested to see who's been reading what--what's not to like about sharing book titles??!! When I get a chance, I post what I've read, usually in clusters!
I signed up for twitter, used it once, and have not kept up with it. Am I the only holdout on the planet?
I already belong to a wiki on Wetpaint. It is easy to use, and much, much simpler than countless back-and-forth emails about who's doing what when. Each time a member of the wiki makes a change, I get a message on my email that I can check to read or edit as I choose.
Delicious and Zoho have applications that would be highly usefulin specific situations, both for us as librarians or for patrons.
Web 2.0 is of itself a very powerful new tool. Lots can be done with it, and it has been useful to explore some of the ways it can work. The downside is that it can be an incredible time-suck just to try to keep up with postings, tweets, feeds, and all the other ways one can be connected by the web. Do it all and you could feel like a fly in the clutches of a hyperactive spider!

I think the trick is to choose the sites that work for you, and use them to do the jobs you wish them to, as you would any other tools. Otherwise the web will own you rather than you owning it, and instead of help you will get overload and clutter.
So many of the web award winners from 2007 were ones we explored, or have used in other contexts--I counted sixteen that I had heard of or used--but even given that, there were many more that were new to me. Surely since then other new sites have emerged, and some of the winners from '07 have bitten the dust. The Web--01 or 02--is a vastly morphing thing for which change is the only constant. I'm glad for the opportunity to play around with some of these changes.