To start off, I’d first like to refine the reader’s knowledge on what New Media is. Some people consider New Media to be a term referring to what is actually a train of thought, where information is available to anyone with great ease. However, this system of thought dates back to the beginning of the library system. New Media in a more modern sense is simply what the World Wide Web is today. Often when people consider the term they simply label it as “Social Media”, and by this they mean the personal interaction between internet users. The everyday internet surfer considers this communication to be the many websites such as Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook along with many other book shelf websites. These websites are completely free for the user to interact with their friends, and where they can express themselves, for anyone they want to see. So the definition of New Media in a more modern sense could be explained just by social networks.

In 2004 Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0, and he defined it as a “business revolution in the computer industry”. When someone calls something a new bubble, it doesn’t just mean your everyday small change, but it means something monumental, something that is revolutionary, which is what Tim O’Reilly meant when he coined the term Web 2. And indeed, the new social and network track that the World Wide Web took on is a revolution in itself. But when Tim O’Reilly coined the term and defined it as a business revolution, what did he mean by this? Most obviously is that online-marketers are able to use these websites, to captivate the attention of their users toward promotions. However, is this really a new bubble, or at least is it significant enough to be considered Web 2.0?

The next revolutionary bubble is arguably the Semantic Web, which could potentially label modern Internet as “Web 3.0”. The point is that what happened to the World Wide Web is a monumental mark toward a social and networked environment, which deserves to be differentiated from the past. The term “bubble”, in itself can sound very misconceiving, because it refers to a sense that it will at some point pop, and just like that, be over. Will web 2.0 (i.e. Social Media) just be considered another faze that people will just get over? As the video by the Richter Scales, Here Comes Another Bubble, depicts, maybe the social media bubble will simply pop, however I find this highly improbable. In my opinion the social media bubble, will never pop but instead will become forever engraved in further internet revolutions such as the semantic web. A common opinion about internet bubbles is that they never pop, but just become new bubbles within previous existing bubbles.

People are simply too adapted to social networks as a platform for it to ever disappear. If anything as Web 3.0 progresses the bare bones of social media will still exist, even if we ever reach the Semantic Web. However on the flip side if this, O’Reilly calls it “the business revolution”, which leads me to my main point of this post. Like the Richter Scales video depicts, if O’Reilly’s term is valid, the bubble already has popped, as prominent domains in social networks are virtually unable to compete with. Meaning, there is not any room left for new websites like Digg with a triple G or Telephone without the T. However, beyond this in the sense of business, I do not consider it to be a revolution, worth calling a bubble.

For marketers these already established domains are very profitable, and will most likely continue to be forever, but they are not a business revolution. Marketing really hasn’t changed since “Web 2.0”. Google Adwords was invented immediately after the dot.com bubble in 2001, three years before O’Reilly Coined the term Web 2.0. It is a common misconception that Social Media is free marketing. O’Reilly in his statement about the term “Web 2.0” does not consider pay per click advertising, which was a platform prior to social media to be a part of the Web 2.0 revolution.

Pay Per Click Advertising is in not an affect of the “Social Media” bubble, which in a way contradicts O’Reilly’s point that Web 2.0 is a business revolution, because the back bone of social media marketing relies on pay per click advertising. It never really changed online-marketers strategies in a significant way that a real “bubble” would. It was a revolution only as a social and network platform to facilitate communication. To marketers, Social Media is still considered a highly important aspect of our everyday business, but it is not a revolution, which rejects O’Reilly’s definition of the term he coined. Google Adwords is and will most likely remain a larger platform on the internet than all social networks combined, yet it has seamlessly existed long before social media. So as “business revolution” the real bubble for online-marketers, is still a part of web 1.0, right after the dot.com bubble when Google Adwords emerged. Google is arguably the flagship and role model for internet advertising, including for social media.

Online-marketing is based on the model of pay per click advertising, regardless if this model is used by social networks, it is not original to social media. Online marketers still pay for ads the way they do in more traditional search engine marketing platforms. Even various viral marketing strategies such as blogging or widgets take a lot of man power to ever generate significant results, and this man power costs money. Pay per click search-engine marketing will most likely give a higher return on investment than you could ever get through viral marketing. Of course paid advertisements on social networks are also very profitable.

So what is the real definition of Web 2.0? indeed social media is a part of it, but it is was not the real business revolution for online-marketers, as this is pay per click advertising which has existed since web 1.0, and will inevitably carry over into ever bubble to come even when Tim Berners-Lee’s dream of the Semantic Web actually emerges. Perhaps it is best to say that Tim Berners-Lee’s definition of the web 2.0 bubble is the most legitimate, “Web 1.0 is about connecting computers, while Web 2.0 is about connecting people”, making O’Reilly’s definition of the term he coined as incorrect. Conclusively, in addition to Lee’s definition of web 2.0, this connection of people is through “Social Media” i.e. social networks, which in itself is revolutionary, but not to business.