Using Your Computer > Using the Internet & Email

Surfing with a purpose: reading the read/write web

By Paul Caplan, New Media Trainer for Media Trust

There’s a lot of hype about Web 2.0 but how can organisations make the most of its potential? This article provides an overview and some easy steps to get you started.

Introduction

The Live Web, Web 2.0, the read/write Web, call it what you like but the potential of engaging in conversation with millions via blogs; of telling stories in multimedia through podcasts and photo/video-sharing; of networking and brainstorming through Wikis is transforming the way in which organisations communicate. When they do it well, they rediscover a human voice, they reintroduce passion and they re-engage with real people rather than “audiences” and “markets”.

Listening as well as talking

But this new web is about listening as well as talking. It’s power and potential lie in the fact that ours is just one voice among many. We have something to say, some contribution to make but so do the countless bloggers and podcasters who are also passionate about poverty or their local community or the environment or… well any one of countless ‘issues’ that connect with our own agendas. But we have to listen so we can engage and create a relationship that might help our (or their) fundraising or campaigning or might just be a connection.

Reading the Live Web is as easy (and as difficult) as writing it. It’s easy in that new powerful search facilities and the wonders of tagging mean we can filter the information overload and just get the stories, ideas and thoughts we want. It’s difficult in that it means we have to lose our arrogance and see that others are worth listening too as well.

Reading the read/write Web is as easy as 1,2,3.

1. Search

Go to a Blog search engine such as www.technorati.com. This service keeps track of all the individual Blog entries, the individual stories and ideas people have written and added ‘tags’ or keywords too. Search for a keyword. Think about what keyword someone might have used. Remember they might not use the jargon or even the politically correct term – they might say ‘developmental delay’ or even ‘mental handicap’ for instance. If you like you can narrow the search to ‘UK’ or even your local area. You can also narrow it down according to ‘Blogs with lots of authority’. These are ones that other Bloggers have linked to.

2. Read

Click on any of the links and you’ll visit the writer’s Blog. See what they have to say. Read with an open mind. These people care enough about the issue to write about it. Maybe you can comment or point them towards more information (either yours or someone else’s). Perhaps you can feed their ideas back into your own organisation. Skim read a variety of postings, get a sense for how the conversation is going. Look at the number of responses, the date of the debates… Are you involved? The conversation is going on anyway.

3. Subscribe

If the Blog seems worth keeping an eye on. Click on the RSS link or logo or copy the ‘feed’ address. Open an account on www.bloglines.com and add that address to your list of feeds. Now, any time you visit Bloglines, it will tell you whether that blogger has said anything new and will pull that story into a single page for you. You can also subscribe to the Technorati search you did so Bloglines will keep an eye on the global conversation and bring all the relevant stories into a single page making it easier to manage.

Now you have new contacts and new ideas, new connections and relationships. Now the difficult bit… what do you do with them?