BSEC Content Technology Meets Web 2.0

One of the more interesting sessions at Buying and Selling eContent was the afternoon session entitled “The Next Wave: Content Technology Meets Web 2.0”.
Ross Mayfield, SocialText CEO, led off with a discussion of wikis and collective knowledge.  First, he enumerated the two types of Collectives that drive social networking applications:
Collective Intelligence (for example, Digg or Memeorandum), where there is a low threshold of user engagement; and
Constructive Intelligence (for example, Wikipedia), where there is a very high level of user engagement required. Clearly, the enthusiasts and other users who are willing to contribute at the Constructive Intelligence level are extremely valuable.

The key takeaway from Ross’ talk is that “Sharing Control Creates Value”.  It’s extremely difficult to share control, particularly for premium content providers, but virtually every successful Web 2.0 application has that at the heart of their business.