Time has become a key dimension of content dynamics (paradigm shift #5)

In a recent past post, we explained that we had identified 5 paradigm shifts occuring in the Web today, through the prism of institutional communication. This was the outcome of a strategic consulting mission we run for the European Commission about the future and stakes of the Europa.eu portal.

The 5 paradigms are:

1. The landscape of visibility has evolved
2. Individuals act as human neurons
3. Enabling plasticity enhances the information ecosystem
4. Communication takes more than a web page
5. Time has become a key dimension of content dynamics

Today we’ll discuss about the first paradigm: Time has become a key dimension of content dynamics.

Of course, the notion of a dynamic website dates back to the early days when web development moved beyond static websites. Still, the influence of time on the web has radically changed in the past couple of years, and needs to be taken into account in a new way.

Real-time web is different than the web

Like physics behaves differently when taken at ‘nano’ level, similarly, web communication offers different characteristics when taken real time. Because it lowers the effort needed to share, or to comment on content, microblogging can appeal to a larger share of the public. Tools such as Twitter allow content (tweets) to be shared instantaneously, even on the go (see e.g. the Iranian uprising, where Twitter was just about the only news source). This very important trend has now been picked up in business tools such as SocialText Signals, Jive SBS, etc.

Spreading of links; rise of trends

We have seen in previous sections the importance of the link, and of the ‘impulse’, the transmission from one ‘human neuron’ to another. Search engines monitor and index these tweets and links, and can detect trends (sometimes also called ‘memes’ ; see Tweetmeme, MicroPlaza,…)

We’re always interested in discussing those trends and pragmatic applications for businesses and institutions. If you’d like to share ideas or submit challenges, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.