Web 2.0 - what’s it all about
It’s an ideavirus of epic proportions — lately all I read about in the webdev news is Web 2.0. What it is, what it isn’t, how tired people are of it, whether there’s still money to be made doing it. Web 2.0 loosely defined is a combination of tools (Ajax/Ruby), approaches (social networking, community-created content) and a certain look and feel (rounded corners and silly names). But what’s the relevance for those of us who work in enterprises where web apps have to be built on a more solid foundation than coolness? Is Web 2.0 just a pretty trend?
The term was coined by O’Reilly when they put on a “Web 2.0″ conference in 2004. An excerpt of their definition of the term from “What Is Web 2.0“:
The question is particularly urgent because the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now pasting it on as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means. The question is particularly difficult because many of those buzzword-addicted startups are definitely not Web 2.0, while some of the applications we identified as Web 2.0, like Napster and BitTorrent, are not even properly web applications! …
Let’s close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
The next time a company claims that it’s “Web 2.0,” test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name. Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.
In a recent interview, WWW creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sees some aspects of Web 2.0 as a reason for deeper thought about universal standards and the semantic web:
Standards like CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the document object model and so on are surfacing as things that some people call Web 2.0 - but really it’s a use of existing technology.
Mash-ups are called Web 2.0, and are limited data integrations - taking a piece of display technology like a map application and doing a handcrafted data integration. I’ve yet to see a mash-up that takes any generic semantic Web data and maps it - the fact that everyone has their own mash-up shows the need for semantic web standards.
Core Concepts:
- The Long Tail: the collective strength of many small websites, blogs, etc. that comprise the bulk of the content on the Web. In marketing terms the Long Tail means that many thousands of small transactions (Google AdSense clicks for example) can add up to as much as or more than a handful of large transactions (and AdSense is much easier to implement).
- User base: the value of services like Flickr, eBay or BitTorrent lies in the size of its user base. People are more attracted to active, rich communities, and will invite their friends. More users means more value to advertisers.
- Collective intelligence: wikis and collaborative knowledge sharing platforms allow site visitors to create their own content. If implemented correctly, an enterprise knowledge base wiki can leverage the experience of thousands of writers instead of just a few. Edits and corrections are the responsibility of everyone. Of course, there are drawbacks (duplicate content, bad content, not conforming to style guidelines) but these can be managed.
- Open-source software. Development, documentation and testing is shared by many users who like being able to contribute to a project. In return, the product is free.
- Applications are never really finished since they are constantly being tested and updated. The traditional software release cycle doesn’t fit here.
There are, of course, skeptics:
- Sick of rounded corners and words missing vowels
- Tired of products always being in “beta”
- Companies have no solid business model other than “it uses AJAX”
Other resources:
- Media Ocean posted a link to a March 2006 video by U Tech that gives a history and overview of Web 2.0.
- Webmonkey also recently published a recent article called Web 2.0: A Pattern Library .
