At its Imaging and Printing Conference in New York City this week, HP is detailing "Print 2.0": a broad business strategy based in part on the assumption that the Web will generate sharply increasing amounts of printed output. Some of the inspiration for Print 2.0 comes from an enormously popular YouTube video called "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us," which HP screened for an audience of analysts and journalists on Wednesday. The video was created by Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Since Prof. Wesch first posted it at YouTube on January 31 of this year, "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" has been seen by more that 1.7 million people, translated into five languages, and presented at major media conferences around the world. It is also available as a download at Kansas State University's "Digital Ethnography" blog.
Note: Eric blogged about this video here. Noel Ward also wrote about it at ODJ.
Discussion
By Eric Vessels on May 30, 2007
I will be interested to hear the basis behind Print 2.0, especially that it will generate sharply increased amounts of printed output. I'm not sure I get that out of Dr. Wesch's video. I wonder how the blog printing services are doing. I know the photo album people seem to be doing good. Web 2.0 certainly does seem to be causing an explosion of content online, which competes with offline content to some degree. How much of that will be printed is an open question to me at this point.
By Eric Vessels on May 31, 2007
http://members.whattheythink.com/news/newslink.cfm?id=27373" rel="nofollow">Here is the full press release, which has more detail into the Print 2.0 thing.
By Ralph Del Rio on Jun 04, 2007
I think we may be a long way from the Web 2.0 conceptialization to be portable. Yet it does show the possibilities of the ever evolving media and information industries. There is a question of quality vs speed and whether people in the global village really will participate or whether it will interact with your tangiable life.
Now Print 2.0 is interesting strategy leading for it to be attainable for those in the HP Society. Those who own HP tools and equipment must be able to access the abilities to transact with the blogs, travel sites, photolabs, on demand publishing sites and be able to set up database friendly digital store fronts/platforms to print what the customer needs efficiently and timely. It can also be a watershed for printing and its relation to crossmedia.
By Pieter Ardinois on Jun 13, 2007
http://ardixiv.blogspot.com/2007/06/unlocking-power-of-print.html" title="I'm not convinced of their 2.0 approach" rel="nofollow">
For me the power of print lies in the possibility to create a personalised print at the same price as a mass produced print and using online techniques to get there. It's not only about high volumes, but about high volumes of different small volume jobs (hence the long tail).