Will the new media change the life of an ordinary man in the nearest future?

When I say “ordinary man” I don’t mean ordinary man from a country like US, where most of the technologies are cheaper for the enduser and the level of life itself is higher than in the rest of the world. My concern is - can the web 2.0 trends change everyday life in general?

A community of people who regularly come online for social activity is big, but is it big enough to speak of a mass revolution in social interaction? Not yet. Here are some dialup stats from December 2006: China - 15%, USA - 19%, Canada - 16%, France - 25%, UK - 15%, Brazil - 43%, India - 46%, Mexico - 44%, Russia - 52%. And I’m sure that indeed in countries like Russia, Mexico, India and China there are much more dialup users. These data are from Ipsos, and their subscribers are mostly broadband users, for a simple reason - it takes time to answer their questions, and dialup users pay per minute.

So, I believe, the abovementioned proves that it is too early to speak of a MASS revolution in social interaction and that there still is a huge gap between “geeks” and “non-geeks”. Considering how fast the things change around the web features, the gap wll only grow month by month. What is yesterday for me is tomorrow for some of my friends. But I want them all there - in my social graph, or whatever we call it.

I think that social networks should pay more attention to low-traffic versions for mobile phones or dialup users - those are users too. And they can receive ads too, and they can be no less active than the bradband users, with the only difference - they wont browse media like videos and pictures. And, which is more impornat, when they finally get to broadband access they will not be years behind other users because they will have their own social graph that would only require some media to be added.

I think open social networks standards are helping this direction develop. Let’s hope for the best…