On the 30th April, 2012, Richard McManus, founder and editor-in-chief of ReadWriteWeb, said: “A noticeable trend this year is beautiful apps and websites. It's all part of a larger trend that I'm calling The Visual Web, meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online.”
I'm writing this post somewhere on the road between Edmonton and Banff in Canada. In four days I'll be presenting at a conference at the University of Alberta about The Visual Web and the power of the image to give the disadvantaged a voice in the media.
There are several statistics that support the rise of The Visual Web. 70% of all likes, comments and shares on Facebook are now related to images, the image sharing platform, Pinterest, is the fastest growing website in history, and changes to the layout of Facebook are targeted at more visual users.
What are we supposed to do with these statistics? Is it simply an indication of our ever decreasing attention spans? Perhaps it is, but I am suggesting that the trend towards a more visual web has several implications. In my presentation in Canada I will be speaking about the positive aspects of this trend, and the fact that it no longer limits the global, online community to educated, literate citizens. Anyone, of any age, can tell a story through a photograph.
There are several implications of this trend, both positive and negative, that we could focus on in our feature. What are the privacy implications of a more visual web? Are we seeing more than we are entitled to? When mothers post their children's photographs on Facebook as soon as they are born, how will these children respond when they grow up and find that the web is saturated with their baby photos?
The notion of the visual web is a new concept, with a lot of unexplored territory.
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