Fin de siecle

absinthe cat

I am beginning to understand what Web 2.0 actually is: a break away from the 20th Century.

Similar to the decadent and uncertain times of impending change in the late 19th Century, Web 2.0 has become our fin de siecle. Outside of these circumstances the similarities end.

The tools of the time were not code, but art and poetry. Mallarmé had his intimate salons. We have our media and our conversations floating in the ether: tagged, linked, and networked with other similar thinkers. APIs have replaced Absinthe.

Google YouTube conference call

Google agreed to buy YouTube today for $1.65 billion in stock. In the conference call it was apparent from both Eric and Sergey’s comments (Sergey mentioned MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut by name), that YouTube is ushuring in the next generation of the internet: one that leverages social networks and video.

Google video will remain as a stand alone with even tighter integration with the main google services. I will be watching Google’s page creator as well as their Google personalized home pages. These were not mentioned specifically in the call, but I suspect they are robust entries for GOOG to expand into social networking.

The next generation internet is here is and it is socially networked media. Yahoo!, MSN, and MySpace, look out.