Edwin Aoki of AOL has just left the FOWA2 stage, and he was very eloquent about the nature of community, its roots online, and the opportunities and responsibilities we face as technologists. Again, unedited notes:
Edwin Aoki, AOL
The Changing Face of Online Communities and Communications
Community a key promise of the web since the beginning. Webmail is the leading driver of page views. Chat & IM moving rapidly online. Obvious community applications, but also others like eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon are based on communities of interest. Industry trends - disaggregation and syndication. Users seek out the the experiences and communities they're interested in. The Long Tail. Loss of control of context. A challenge for content and application providers. Think about embedding of YouTube videos. Web Apps too will become syndicated. Mashups. Interactions increasingly taking place in situ rather than in dedicated destinations. Community goes mobile, increasingly following users. Time online increasing, blurring between real and virtual - Second Life, WoW. Shared responsibility of technologists. Safety of tools, security/privacy, social effects. Bridging the digital divide, accessibility, age, socio-economic backgrounds. The Future is in the Balance - power/ease of use, social/commercial, online/offline.
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