web3 medium - myAvatar myLife

web3... continued
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what next?
Just how is my Web3 vision going to take root in a space where, as I said before: anything more complex than a light switch is out and so many “game changing” venture claims fail? The answer is simple – we are already half way there and I'm just gauging an existing trend.
Clear signs exist that a more personalised and bespoke future of Social Web is near. An aesthetically richer medium capturing style, creativity and the compulsion to express more than in-your-face comments and slapstick pics. Apparently, the fastest growing SW network at the moment is SoundCloud (http://soundcloud.com/). It is just like the original MySpace on steroids - encouraging users to record or create music and sound, share it with the world, building communities in the process.
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have a look at this; but I can't be bothered sorry
Since I believe that an underlying desire for richer profiles exists, will SoundCloud be a killer app? I don't think so, the narrow-band interest communities are old hat now – nerds calling out ad nauseam “have a look at this” will never make a social scene. That's been tried to death and represents nothing more than Flicker or YouTube for sound – not a community but simply a space to dump stuff. Most likely it will be a nice gadget popping up on a wall of every budding DJ in your crowd. Another reason for SoundCloud to fail is the lack of technical prowess. For one, I've never experienced a run without a number of errors popping up, but more importantly the user experience is just so poor e.g. the sound cuts out as you browse – surely it could play on until you select another track.
Frankly, Facebook's “listen and watch what your friends are doing” is likely to have more grip once the initial flood of outcry from users reluctant to accept new features and changes dies down. The recently introduced timeline, on the other hand could prove to be a dud, even if it enhances the means for sharing one's life with “friends”. It smacks of the tedious – look at my snaps from the holiday, when we tend to yawn looking for a way out. The point I'm trying to make is that push is out and pull is in, a voyeuristic peek at your friends is OK, but slide nights faded to obscurity very long ago. There is a fine line somewhere between “jack ass” videos or one's intimacy exposed and the vain look at me calls.
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my id (the antonym of ego)
The appeal of the secret or hidden side in all of us is constantly growing in the otherwise conformist world. The need to reveal it is parallel in every sense, even the public eye increasingly becomes a witness of the extremes. The disparity between the self and the mundane act we present everyday will collapse in time, but for now an outlet for the more extrovert facets needs to be found.
Few years ago I read a very instructive comment regarding SN identity: “we create a parody of ourselves on Facebook and before we know it we become it”. It resonated with me like a revelation, I was experiencing it in Second Life. Perhaps “parody” doesn't quite capture it and should be qualified by pointing at the need to make a joke of it, we simply can't face our fantasies easily. Fetishes or even quirks are not welcomed either, so perhaps the “joke” identity is often the only way to come out and reveal the other self.
This paradigm is far more obvious in Second Life - the concept of an avatar identity is a given and the meaning implied through it is widely accepted and readily understood. First time noobs seem perplexed, but soon someone tells them it isn't MSN and they would win more friends being a truck or a lizard then running around as a “boy next door” screaming “will someone cyber with me now?” I just didn't get SL until I made my first female avatar, I had plenty of opportunity to chat with people at the local pub in real life, so I'd seldom log just to be there (I started when I was studying it). Needles to say, before long my id (alter ego) became an obsession and the boundaries began to blur. In time I realised that I've recreated my identity against all the expectations of conformity in the world around me. However, I'll tell this anecdote in another post.
TBC

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