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As humans we have a fundamental need to be questioned about our opinions. And if no one asks us we’ll start our own online soapbox from where we can shout them. Tapping this need to be questioned can get interesting reactions. Sites like Blogger, Wikipedia, Reddit, StackOverflow, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, etc have tapped into this need to express our opinions. We now have so many different ways of creating content online. Entire conversations over topics important as well as trivial are what is building a new stage for human interaction on the Internet.
But content on the Internet is different depending on where, when and how it is created. Sometimes content is created purely out of the author’s need to create, express, or inform. Sometimes, it is a response and still otherwise it is a simple expression of personal opinion. What follows is a simple classification I made of the different levels of content created on the Internet. They have been classified in order of cognitive difficulty of creation/expression given that 1 is the most difficult and 3 the easiest.
The Statement is the first step in creating a conversation on the Internet.This might be any text we read on any website created by any author. The Statement might be a form of expression or a scientific experiment. Blog posts, articles written on Wikipedia, New York Times, ArsTechnica, images and video posted on Flickr and YouTube is an example. The Statement is the always the start of any conversation on the Internet. It is the host on which Level 2 is built.
The next level of content creation is the addition of responses to the original content that was created on Level 1. If content on Level 1 was the start of the conversation, then content on Level 2 are the responses. These responses may again be on the form of images, video, elaborate texts or even “OMG ROFLOLZ”. Responses build the thread of a conversation together. It is also the object of creation for Level 3 content. Speaking abstractly, all Statements can also be created as response to previously perceived content and hence should be considered as Responses. However, all Statements have to created from some stimulus, hence defining the need to create or express.
The simplest way of creating content for a person. A digital grunt of acknowledgement and approval or disapproval. A single value to rank a response. Whether it a like or dislike, thumbs down or up, sad emoticon or happy emoticon. The Boolean is the easiest way for us to express our opinion. It all comes down to a single value. No Blog Post. No comments. No 140 Character limit. Just a single value. The easiest way communicate. The digital equivalent of a very basic human expression. It can’t get simpler that this.
On the Internet all content is not created equal. Cognitively, it is much more difficult to compose a blog post than it is to respond with a comment. And it is much more difficult to write a response than it is to click the Like button.