Why Is The Web Complex - Because We Are

Last night I did what I often do, took a couple of articles from the web that were of interest and put them together in the same post just before going to bed. I also did what Seth Godin says that we do, I scanned, then wrote down some off the top of the head ideas.

This morning I took a second look at the American Express Open Forum post. First off, I should have recognized and acknowledged that the article was by Anita Campbell. Her Small Business Trends blog is one of the main blogs featured by this weblog and has provided a good deal of food for thought. I also did not explore the links she provided. I was able though to independently come up with the same data on there being over 100 million websites through CNN News that that she found with her Metric 2.0 link. The point is not that I am a great researcher but that everybody has quick access to data. She also discusses Affiliate Marketing.

I am interested in how it all links together even if it is not monetized. The web seems to me to have a natural tendency to create links without much effort. This weblog uses web 2.0 tools to track itself, but it has taken minimal effort to expand its reach beyond the avenues of connection that have been discussed in previous posts.

Ms. Campbell was herself part of one of these connections. One of my early posts You Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift dealt with "anti-social responsibility campaigns" which criticized the idea behind one of her posts. This is a minor blog in the blogosphere. I get 17 subscribers Ms. Campbell has over 86,000. Despite that she was able to find my post and write me explaining her position. This means that first the system she used was complex enough to recognize my post, second she was kind enough to take the time to respond, a computerized algorithmic approach and a human response working together.

My review not only lacked depth (which most web-writing does), it does not actually have the same focus. Her focus was on a business enterprises and how to make them better within the web 2.0 environment. This is social commentary from the peanut gallery, but there are a lot of peanuts out there. The web is complex because we are complex. We are more complex together; with the web the crowd can source the crowd. That has be be ultimate complexity. The problem is then with us, too many e-mails, some times too shallow reads and reviews, too much altogether and we get overwhelmed. It is possible though to get through all the noise, to get your message across and find connections.