Ben Bleikamp's blog about technology and college

We don’t need everything to be online

Online trip planners. Online note taking and collaboration. Online wine catalogs. Online ___________. If you can think of it, someone will think it’s a great idea and turn it into the next web 2.0 application complete with Ajax and gradients and a great looking logo.

I’m not knocking Corkd or web 2.0 or anything other web applications (at least not directly). I’m just asking why I need a web app to plan my next vacation or to take notes in class. We don’t need everything in our lives to be on the internet. The internet is a wonderful tool, however, just because something is online doesn’t mean it’s automatically easier. Asking someone what happened in a class I missed is easier than searching through notes online. Having a friend recommend decent wine would be easier than logging into a website and looking through countless wines.

I like web 2.0. I like that people are thinking about users. I like that people want to make life easier. People need to remember that just because you make something doable online doesn’t mean people will want to do it online. The internet isn’t a magic tool that saves time no matter what.

Keeping track of dozens, even hundreds, of user names and passwords and remembering which website does what might seem like an easy task to all the “web guys (and girls)” out there. But remember - for these web applications to be successful they need to appeal to a much broader audience, not just the geeks attending SXSW and the WWDC. Would your parents log in to a website to find out what type of wine they want? Would they login to a web-based desktop to use AIM? No, probably not.

I understand the argument that these tools are pushing the envelope and forcing people to look at technology in new ways, and I think that’s great. But I don’t think that there is a business model there. There is a bit of discovery, a bit of “look what we can do, think of the potential,” but there isn’t money.

New media is awesome. I love it. I try to get my friends to use Newsvine, Bloglines (and RSS), and all the other great tools that have come out of the whole “web 2.0″ thing. But when are people going to realize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean anyone will actually use it?