Given the web's emphasis on diversity, participation and user-driven democracy, it is only natural that believers in mass customization have embraced it as their naturally. For MySpace, read my product; for collaboration, read configurator; for spreadsheet read Spreadshirt, and so on. It all connects. But is the marriage of internet and mass customization really such a happy one? And, perhaps more to the point: is it actually happening?

If the media-coverage that web 2.0 has received over the past year is any measure, 'mass customization' doesn't even make it into the margins. And I have yet to read the word 'configurator' published in a German-speaking newspaper of any repute (or get it recognized by my MicrosoftWord Spellchecker). A recent full-page "web 0.0" polemic in the Süddeutsche (8.12.07) didn't once mention either term, fortunately so; when the F.A.Z. ran an article on Spreadshirt's Lukasz Gadowski two month ago (29.10.07), their was at least mention of an 'online design studio' being involved. Beyond that, nothing. Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube and EBay are by now household names, but so far as I can see, mass customization remains the stuff of specialist books, lectures and in-house seminars, scoring its biggest success behind the scenes and, of course, on the production lines.

Disentangling an overt publicity problem from structural issues obviously requires further thought and research. But I'd like to offer you some pointers as to why the marriage of internet and in particular web 2.0 with mass customization practices and configurators should by no means be taken for granted:

• Collaboration: while web 2.0 is based on individual inputs into larger projects such as encyclopedias, discussion forums and role-games, mass customization is based on individual inputs in exchange for individual products. Designing your own mountain-bike online may well be a more interactive and complex project than downloading shared music or blogging on the presidential elections, but the latter has eminently more social or indeed public relevance.
• Not for Profit: web 2.0-style participation is often situated at the intersection of business and leisure, but overt commercialization – such as Facebook's attempt to introduce its Beacon product-purchase newsstream – are fiercely resisted. Small wonder, then, that Mass Customization doesn't show up on the web 2.0 agenda – it is neither a human right, nor a platform for uninhibited, swarm-like communication, but a working and profitable business model.
• Quality: mass customization emphasizes the information, innovation and loyalty benefits of companies entering into direct contact with their customers, but it is ultimately still down to skilled engineers and designers to absorb this input and process it into new product generations; for all the input consumers might give about their preferences, they don't actually know how to build a car or glue a sports-shoe together, which is why there's still a bright future ahead for companies, university degrees and professional expertise.
• Creativity: Web 2.0, by contrast to the skills-driven world of corporate production, actually levels the status of trained experts and amateurs to produce social goods of a different quality all together. There are some virtual thrills in participating and selflessly exercising one's creativity that have nothing to do with the material thrills of co-designing and purchasing a reliable and immediately useful product.

All of which is not to say that mass customization and the internet don't make good partners, that there aren't abundant opportunities for cross-fertilization between web 2.0 tactics and a customer-driven economy. But we should be neither surprised nor disappointed that mass-customization isn't getting as huge a lift from the internet boom as might have been expected. Everything doesn't necessarily have to connect to everything else, even in a networked age.

Indeed, we might even choose to actively resist the temptation of advocating and marketing web 2.0 and mass customization on the same terms – the resulting euphemisms such as "Me-Volution" and "Prosumers" don't really convince on either count. Mass customization is principally a stand-alone paradigm for achieving specific objectives in a business realm, and this is where it really needs to stand its ground.