On January 16th, the Library of Congress teamed with Flickr for a pilot project with substantial and fascinating implications for the continuing evolution of web-based communities and their direct influence on the control and dissemination of information.

From a collection of around 14 million prints and photographs, upwards of 3,000 photos from two of the LOC’s most popular collections were included in a new Flickr page. The LOC asked web-users to use the basic principles of Web 2.0 to assist in the identification and categorization of images for which the Library had little to no information.

The results, in only two days, were astounding to the the LOC (and not surprising to those familiar with the power of Web 2.0).  Using blogs, tags, Diggs and more, the project stats on January 18th reflected:

• 392,000 views on the photostream
• 650,000 views of photos
• 1.1 million total views on the LOC/Flickr account
• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed
• 420 of the photos have comments
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited

Of note: “A trio of images, previously thought to have been picturing different events, have been confirmed to be photographs from Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration as president on March 4, 1865.”

The potential of this global “gathering of tribes” is not lost on the Library of Congress, who called the initial stages of the project a “a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and—most importantly—wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it”. 

As the traditional curators and custodians of history and fact collaborate with web-users in the re-assessment, aggregation and arguably most important, sharing of content and facts, I predict a leveling of the playing field of informational authority. 

I wonder…will this iteration of Web 2.0, this vibrant and buzzing generation of web-based communities, become an extended Summer of Love on the web?  A coming together of the people in the re-evaluation of what we are given as ‘fact’, and a global effort to identify and apply truth through community involvement and all-encompassing communication?  We shall see!

How can you, the businessperson, harness and benefit from this phenomenon?

One of our savvy industrial SEO clients asked about additional means of bringing visitors to their site, above and beyond our assistance with top placement on Google and other major search engines, thoughtful saturation of their site with appropriate keywords, and fine-tuned metadata (another optimization opportunity not lost on the LOC).  We suggested they explore Web 2.0 principles in the propagation of their website on the web.

Taking our advice, they placed key videos of their machining processes and capabilities on Youtube, with keywords integrated into the video description, and were careful to include a URL hyperlink back to their company website.

This is a new area of suggestion for us, also, and we were all pleased to see that referrals to their site increased significantly through the Youtube videos–potential clients viewed their capabilities and were impressed enough to pay them a virtual visit. 

JOIN THE REVOLUTION! Harness the power of the people, Web 2.0 and multimedia information sharing to increase your profits and spread the word of your company’s ability to provide a quality service!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.