Wikinomics is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and get it. It is a good interesting read on how the Web is no longer about idly surfing and passively reading or watching, but how it has evolved into a new dynamic form of community and creative expression, one of sharing, socializing, collaborating and creating communities.
Participation has, according to a Wikinomics, reached a tipping point where new forms of mass collaboration are changing how goods and services and invented, produced, marketed, and distributed on a global basis. Now the perfect storm of technology, demographics and global economics is an unrelenting force for change and innovation.
They pinpoint 2006 has been the year when the programmable Web eclipse the static Web, on every level. For example:
- Flickr beat out webshots
- Wikipedia beat out Britannica
- Blogger beat out CNN
- Epinions beat out Consumer Reports
- Google Maps beat out MapQuest
- MySpace beat out Friendster
- Craigslist beat out Monster
The losers were websites. The winners were communities.
Wikinomics believes that profound changes in the world of technology are giving rise to power new tools based on community and collaboration. We are a new economy – a vast global network of connected people that swap and exchanging ideas, information and an endless list of other services.
And from where I stand I can see it happening to our industry as well. The real estate industry is changing and the thousands of blogs, social networks and the wikis are already laying the foundation for the new world. New business models are already being born, new paths already being charted and new leaders already being groomed.
Real estate over the next decade will change forever and Wikinomics may shed some light as to the path. |
