The internet was meant to be an interactive platform. Even in the days of the DarpaNet, the classical versions of the online medium, were all about allowing people to exchange ideas with one another. Ignore the fact that the most people considered Java to be a great cup of coffee, or the fact that we were hooked one heck of an expensive connectivity, getting online on a copper wire, only to browse through the likes of Text-based PINE, Telnet and mIRC.
In the days when Paknet and Digicom were around, life was obviously a lot simpler… and slower.
It was happening in bits and pieces even in those days, and well, taking a look back down the path that we’ve sprinted down, the world is a very different place right now – more so than it ever was.
I made my first website on Geocities back in 1996. It was a blue-colored, paw print background tiled and horrific yellow-colored text on top of it. But even after linking the pages, it still took me a while to figure out how to FTP into their free community server and upload the pages. And then it took a while to figure out that people would only visit the site if I had the incredibly difficult-to-remember link up on my ICQ list. I didn’t want to send the link out to people because I only knew a few addresses, and well, forcing people to see how smart I was, really wasn’t my thing. Yes… ego is a bad, bad thing!
Oh my God! Without really putting it in your face, I’ve just addressed the difference between developing and marketing websites in the first version of the Great Online, and Web2.0! The difference between just having information there and being able to push or pull it to suit your lifestyle.
Traditionally, there have been three main challenges with the Internet: How to develop something, how to put it up online, and how to let people know that you’ve developed something online?! One of the reasons the acronym for the ‘triple doubleya’ transofmring into the wonderful ‘web we weave’ is because Web2.0 addresses and reduces the barrier to entry for a lot of the people who otherwise would have never had a chance to contribute to the online frontier. Make it easier for people to get online and they will do just that.
Today it takes as long to develop and publish a basic website, as it does to click the save button in a document. The tools are there and you can make all the changes you want. Editing text and adding photographs and video components don’t require any amount of technical knowledge. You can setup a simple RSS feed to develop a loyal readership onto your site – You can integrate a number of widgets into your site very quickly and with Open Source finally having more appeal to the newbie, more of these freebies are being developed and tailored to suit your specific needs.
If you want to promote your project or your idea, you now have communities and portals that can link keywords from your site and make you stand out from the crowd in no time. Granted, it takes some time, but considering how quick Google’s bots and other widgets are, you really can’t complain if your face gets plastered across a community of several thousand eyeballs, though you can certainly complain that it didn’t make it there quick enough!
Be it Facebook, Orkut, Linked in or educational platforms such as Think.Com, you have the potential to control where, when and how you want to start off your viral marketing campaign. Whether you are selling a product, a service or just a simple idea, you can push it out on a number of different platforms.
And every portal you get onto has placed itself in its own niche, its own unique nook, cranny and corner and has no shortage of loyal readers. The world is indeed a big place, but it is scary how quickly you can connect to the billion people who are plugged in to the virtual world. In fact, the reality of the virtual world is ironically simple: it is flat and nobody is further than click on your mouse or mobile phone.
Convergence of technology, media and man’s limitless imagination has blurred all boundaries and made everything within reach. Whether you are a service provider, the likes of Wateen Telecom who is trying to offer the average Pakistani consumer the opportunity to be heard, be seen and interact on television, telephone and internet, or whether you are the likes of Cisco Systems, who are providing the majority of the infrastructure and connectivity to power the internet around the world and in Pakistan, it’s all possible.
News travels at breakneck speeds and more often than not, bloggers manage to put the news out there online before the major news networks do. When the news channels in Pakistan follow blog sites such as pkpolitics.com, you know times have changed.
The vague figure of 700,000 Pakistanis plugged into one device or another is a start. It’s a beginning. Broadband is the way to go. Wireless and mobile technologies don’t just need to happen any longer – they need to be embraced.
The integration of technology and the power that telecom provides today, levels the playing field as we know it. It’s no longer about who is more powerful or who has more money. Today, it’s all about the fact that if you are connected and have some semblance of creativity, you can compete with anyone. anywhere. anytime.
The interactive internet gives way to a lot more than just a fun feeling online. It allows you to stand up and stick out of the crowd of millions and billions of pages, ideas, sites, communities and people. It empowers you to plug in the kitchen sink, or the last mile, that we used to shirk away from.
In the age of collaboration that we live in, fixing the kitchen sink just isn’t such a big deal. Welcome to the New World!
