Article Report: Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong

The reading “Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong” is a chapter from the book Spreadable Media, by Henry Jenkins, published in 2013. Web 2.0 represents the reconstruction of relationships between producers and their audiences in a growing internet market. Web 2.0 companies need the internet because it is a platform for distributing, promoting, and refining their products, and they depend on their audience which causes users to have a certain degree of control in the company. The chapter intended to look at the different conceptions about fair economic social relations held by media companies and their audiences. It also aimed to examine how worth, value, and trust are demonstrated through the concepts of moral economy and the relationship between gift and commodity economies.

The article focuses on YouTube as a main example of a web 2.0 company. YouTube makes a lot of their revenue from advertising, and advertisers want to advertise on YouTube because YouTube videos are watched a lot. These videos on YouTube are almost always made by users that do not receive any money for their work, yet the company does. Both parties still do what they do because of the “moral economy”. Moral economy describes the norms and understandings that allow users and companies to conduct business together. The users are receiving worth not value; value is monetary, whereas worth is sentimental. These users know they aren't getting paid, but they make productions anyway because they have pride in what they do and have their own personal interests. This also makes them engaged and not exploited because they know that what they are creating might make somebody else money, but they are still doing it anyway because they want to do it.

 Classical economic models base labor as motivated by financial incentives compared to motivation coming from recognition, reputation, and satisfaction. An example would be that users may measure success by how many followers they have on twitter, but similarly television executives measure success by how many people are watching their network. The TV executives are motivated mainly by money, whereas the users are motivated by pride in oneself. This is what Jenkins thinks is the flaw of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 bases labor motivation on economic value and doesn't

take into account the worth that the users are also receiving for what they are contributing. Both the users and the company are receiving what they want to receive.

This book was reviewed by a few people, but the chapter in general was not. The top review thought this book was meant for specialists in the field of technology, and not for average readers, because it was dense and involved subjects that normal people would not fully comprehend.

The author, Henry Jenkins, is still alive and well at age 56. He received his Masters from Iowa, and then came here to UW-Madison to earn his PhD. One interesting piece of information about him is that he used to write about video games and he even testified before congress about using video games for learning in 1999. At the moment he is teaching at USC and working on other literacy projects.