An Authenticy Timeline

FastCompany.com recently published the following timeline to describe the evolution of trust and/or authencity. The article defined the Era of Meaning as having started in 1985, started by the "New Coke" marketing.

The fear of Web 2.0 arrived in the USA in 2004. Soon, time passed and in 2006, we were in awe to find out about YouTube that came out of nowhere and consumed more bandwidth than the whole world in 2000. MySpace, FriendSter, Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Technorati and many other social software became the darlings of the Web community and subject to possible acquisitions by the Tech giants. In Malaysia, such fear only arrived in 2006, and catapulted to its height in 2007 when the government are hinting on the possible move to register all local-based bloggers, just as how they successfully forced all mobile prepaid users to register with respective telcos. Will late 2007/2008 be the period where all Malaysians will start to embrace crowdsourcing? The say, better late than never. (We've already missed the Search, Directory and Commerce era the past full decade! To-date we still have no equivalences to Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay/Paypal -- although some claims to be the Malaysia this and that).

Can Pajamanation Malaysia be one of the catalysts? Will other innovations spring up this year? Not the usual copycats, but the real Mc Coy ones. The real inventions, or true innovations... Any answer, MDEC?

(Psst.. we already have several low-profile Web 2.0 giants in Malaysia -- just not Malaysia-only, but taking over the masses, globally!!)


EXCERPT from FASTCOMPANY.com:

Era of Meaning: Abundance and transparency create a demand for meaning. Social networks leverage the Internet to expose insincere brands. The era of trust and passion.

1985: The calamitous launch of New Coke breaks consumer trust and brand equity, all because of insincere pandering to taste tests.

1989-1991: Tiananmen Square protests and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Images and coverage from Western news sources make it impossible for governments to control the flow of information. The dismantling of Communist Europe begins.

1994: Netscape launches its first browser, an instant success. The World Wide Web goes on to flatten the world and make it difficult for companies to fake it.

1999: Establishment of epinions.com, focused on consumer-product reviews from real users instead of "experts."

2001: The Internet bust, 9/11, the subsequent US recession, and corporate scandal leave Americans searching for "meaning, God and jihad."

2002-'03: Nationally respected historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose and establishment journalists Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass become embroiled in plagiarism scandals, further eroding the public trust.

2003: Pew Research study shows that 21% of people aged 18-29 get their news mainly from the fake newscasts delivered by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live.

2005-'07: Consumers become original-content creators: YouTube launches and an explosion of user-generated video follows; "You" voted Time magazine's Person of the Year; MySpace becomes the world's sixth most popular Web site, picking up 80% of visits to all social-networking sites. Users close the digital loop on authenticity, becoming both originators and consumers of that which they have created.