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...production creates new articulation between individualism and solidarity, which reveals the strength of weak cooperation. Web 2.0 services allow individual contributors to experience cooperation ex post. The strength of the weak cooperation arises from the fact that it is not necessary for individuals to have an ex ante cooperative action plan or altruistic intention. They discover cooperative opportunities only by making public their individual production. The paper illustrates this phenomenon by analysing the uses of different services and by looking at the new process of innovation that appears through Barcamp and Coworking spaces.
Key words: Web 2.0, weak cooperation, BarCamp.
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Echoing the euphoric 2000 internet bubble, the Web 2.0 label is now so widespread that it is increasingly difficult to define the boundaries and characteristics of the services it covers. Indeed, the success of Web 2.0 affirms that we are reaching a major turning point in the use of relational internet. However, it is necessary to define the specificities of the relational character of these services and their original innovation frame. This paper looks at some continuities and ruptures in the practices of those services that are the most characteristic of Web 2.0 (blogs, social media, user-generated content services etc.). We conclude that one the sociological characteristics of these services is that making personal production public creates a new articulation between individualism and solidarity, which reveals the strength of weak cooperation.
Web development always contains the community ideal. But the community--whatever it is before or through the digital exchanges between individuals--is usually considered as both voluntary and organised cooperation (RHEINGOLD, 1994). In both cases, the cooperation between individuals can be qualified as strong: Common sociability and a set of roles and defined exchange modalities gives individuals the feeling that they are part of the community and share a common vision. However, the success of Web 2.0 services shows that its users mobilise much weaker cooperation between individuals. Web 2.0 services allow individual contributors to experience cooperation ex post. The strength of the weak cooperation comes from the fact that it is not necessary for individuals to have an ex ante cooperative action plan or altruist preoccupation. They discover cooperative opportunities only by making their individual production public, i.e. texts, photos, videos etc. This paper tries to propose some sociological interpretation of this characteristic of Web 2.0 based on selected examples. More generally, it tries to propose a broader interpretation of the cooperative individualism paradigm (FLICHY, 2004).
* Public space as an opportunity for cooperation
The rise of Web 2.0 practices seems to contradict many forecasts regarding the form of cooperation and community that were promoted at the beginning of internet practices. Academic debates on internet uses have shaped two very opposite representations of the internet user. The first has been conceived as a utilitarian agent mainly concerned with maximising its own personal interest (searching information, buying and selling for a better price, promoting its competencies and gaining reputation). The second has been defined as an altruist individual motivated by collective action, volunteering, community belonging, public interest and knowledge sharing. This tension between these two conceptions of the web user, often reinforced by academic differences between economists and sociologists, lies at the core of debates about the motivation of free software developers, e-commerce or p2p file sharing. As already shown on many occasions (BENKLER, 2006), those two conceptions of users' goals overemphasise users' motivations as an explicit and clear plan of action. In practice, their goals appear to be less-defined, more flexible and pragmatic, and they change when the user's involvement in internet practices is more important, regular and active. Moreover, neither commercial web services nor strong communities of peers linked by a common normative or political goal have developed massively on the internet. In a certain way, they have been overtaken by Web 2.0 practices, which appear to lie somewhere in-between utilitarian and altruist behaviours. The success of Web 2.0 services reveals the user's hybrid motivation where the individualization of the user's goals meets the opportunity of sharing personal expression in a public sphere.
Individualism and relation making
Involvement modalities in Web 2.0 practices appear to be more personal and individualistic than has been suggested by promoters of the World Wide Web, who often emphasize the social community of digital worlds (FLICHY, 2001). Users of social media services have very individualistic motivations and goals when they begin their internet practice: bloggers want to publish their own production, Flickr or YouTube users want to store their pictures or videos, Wikipedians begin to write an article about their personal concern etc. The idea of horizontal cooperation between participants is not part of the plan of action for users. Sociological explanations of the rise of digital self-production must be found in the dynamic of individualization in contemporary societies: the increase of cultural capital, the desire for uniqueness and visibility, the experimentation with new forms of identity-building and the search for reputation and notoriety (ALLARD & VANDENBERGHE, 2003). The blurring of the frontier between user and producer is directly linked to individual transformation characterized by the desire for expression and the search for autonomy....
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