What About Web 2.0 Networks?

The jury is out on just how Web 2.0 technologies will enhance the development of networks for social impact. Will they be tools that increase the effectiveness and efficiency of networks? Will they be disruptive capacities—greatly broadening effective participation in, for instance, public policy making and communities of practice or ushering in an era of widespread “bottom up” user-generated, rather than “top down” filtered, information?

Our own initial but brief exploration of this topic—monitoring some of the literature; interviewing network practitioners immersed in Web 2.0; listening to the questions/experiences of networks we advise or manage—has led us to this conclusion: Although most people are asking what the Web 2.0 technologies do, the critical question is how the technologies meet—or don’t—a network’s strategic needs. The answer depends, of course, on understanding what the technologies do, but is also depends on understanding the strategic needs of networks seeking social impact.

So our contribution for now is more questions:

1. What are the hypotheses about the differences Web 2.0 can make for achieving a network’s goals—learning goals, policy advocacy goals, innovation goals, branding goals, and others?
2. What are the hypotheses about the differences Web 2.0 can make for improving the functionality of a network—its members’ connectivity, alignment, or collaborations for production—and for helping a network evolve?
3. What are the hypotheses about the differences Web 2.0 can make for networks that are building movements, or mobilizing campaigns, or developing fields—three very different sorts of activities some networks undertake?
4. What patterns can Web 2.0 usage reveal that provide strategic information/insight for a network?
5. How can a network measure and differentiate qualitative vs. quantitative effects of Web 2.0 technologies, and their value for a network?

• Many Web 2.0 technologies generate a large number of connections, helping, almost effortlessly, to expand a network’s membership and potential reach. This may be of great value to some networks, but many networks depend more on the quality than the quantity of their connections, because they seek to build trust and reciprocity among members, which is the basis for taking action. The degree to which Web 2.0 helps to build high-quality connectivity—a motivating relationship—is less clear than its ability to build quantity.
• Web 2.0 clearly is a messaging medium. You can use it to get the word out to more and more people. But here, too, there is a quality vs. quantity concern. As messages are passed along, node to node, what is lost in message fidelity? Does it matter? And what is lost in branding?  Again, the value of Web 2.0’s messaging impact seems to depend on what the network’s strategy is.
• How can the quality of Web 2.0 effects be measured and evaluated?