Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook promised a new participatory online culture. Yet, technology insider Alice Marwick contends in this insightful book, “Web 2.0” only encouraged a preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research—which includes conversations with entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities, and Silicon Valley journalists—explores the culture and ideology of San Francisco’s tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App store, when the city was the world’s center of social media development. Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to materialize: while many continue to view social media as democratic, these technologies instead turn users into marketers and self-promoters, and leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritize profits over participation. Marwick analyzes status-building techniques—such as self-branding, micro-celebrity, and life-streaming—to show that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered inequality and reinforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by race, class, and gender.

YouTube、Twitter和Facebook等社交媒体技术承诺了一种新的参与性网络文化。然而，技术业内人士爱丽丝-马威克在这本富有洞察力的书中认为，"Web 2.0 "只是鼓励了人们对地位和注意力的关注。她的原创性研究--包括与企业家、互联网名人和硅谷记者的对话--探讨了旧金山科技界在网络热潮和应用程序商店之间的文化和意识形态，当时该市是世界上社交媒体发展的中心。马威克认为，早期的革命目标未能实现：虽然许多人继续认为社交媒体是民主的，但这些技术反而把用户变成了营销者和自我推销者，并使技术公司准备侵犯隐私，把利润放在参与之上。Marwick分析了建立地位的技术--如自我品牌、微型名人和生活流--以表明Web 2.0并没有带来文化革命，而只是进一步加剧了不平等，加强了以种族、阶级和性别为界的传统社会分层。