Is Web 2.0 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants?
Defining web 2.0 nowadays seems to be a a very popular sport for many important bloggers and analysts. Our self definition of Strategic Board as a “web 2.0″ company/technology invites me to express my thoughts on Web 2.0 although I am not sure I wear pink glasses when I look at it.
Web 2.0 being as one of the many transformations the IT space goes through can be broken to different parts:
Web 2.0 Technological Changes:
RSS - “machine readable” format of changes to a web site. Blogs as unique form of websites that supports RSS enable anyone to publish content on the web very easily. This huge pool of RSS sources(feeds) enable all forms of aggregation to satisfy each internet user information needs. RSS created new forms of publishing that didn’t exist before such as personal publishing, co-publishing and more.
Tagging - A behaviour of internet users to mark specific content with designated keyword. Once tagging exists another level of information classification is available using tag sharing, aggregation and display. Several tools to support each one of these activites have been created to support this behavior.
Wikis - A new form of knowledge base where the users of the knowledge base build and maintain it. Pretty much similar to the open source movement where still a very few build and really contribute to the source while the majority just enjoy using it. High level of user adoption made this form of knowledge creation highly effective to certain groups.
Infrastructure
Search - Several search tools that provide access to the newly created RSS/Tagged content. These search tools are mostly characterized by the charecteristics of the content they index. The “live” nature of new content (content is being published all the time 7 X 24) and the “permanence” of content published by a blog (a post usually doesn’t change, which makes indexing different). Blogs content has very similar charecteristics to old fashion news except for the numbers of publishers.
Other- RSS Feed processing, caching, directories, changes notification (pings) services, feed/blog publishing tools and probably a lot more then what is mentioned here. These tools and platforms are the basis of a “working” blogosphere.
Main Drivers:
No bandwidth problems - being creative as a developer or publisher has never been so easy thanks to the fact that users can enjoy it in a timely fashion.
Working internet infrastructure - many people/companies/investors have invested and built a rather reliable web infrastructure. These investments, which burst to the face of stakeholders during 99-02 serves today the wave of web 2.0 entrepreneurs. In simple words it is not really a problem today to get a new web 2.0 service up and running.
Content content content - users adoption and ability to express whatever is on their mind via blogs created a huge pile of raw material for innovation. Internet users in my opinion are the real “heroes” and drivers of the Web 2.0 phenomena.
Open source platforms - today you can build a fully scalable venture using only open source tools. You’ve got an operating system for free, a very good database, scalable scripting languages and many other small tools to make your life easier. Building a similar Web 2.0 product few years ago that relys on similar infrastructure would not be possible without external financing and “unique” experts.
Browser UI advancement - the web browser, which once was a simple text/html viewing tool became a development and delivery platform for almost any application you can dream of. As much as it makes manufacturers of operating systems sad it makes us Web 2.0 developers very happy.
Alternative financing sources or a.k.a Google ads - nothing more to say about this:). Google brings us the traffic, Google pays for the traffic and Google makes money on the traffic - everyone are happy.
Customers tolerance for incomplete products - As in many “exciting” transformations, users are highly tolerant to bugs and low quality products hidden behind the “beta” curtain. This enables very early interaction with users, which makes products much more valuable eventually. This tolerance can also be attributed to the hunger users accumulated during the “dry” years of 99-03.
Economic/Business State:
Business models - Currently the only business model for Web 2.0 is the long “lived” eyeballs model. We have returned to this notorious model in our Web 2.0 companies mainly because this is what interests the most our “saviours” with their deep pockets - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. There are few companies who offer premium services but still they mainly take pride in the number of their free users. Some of the companies try to squeeze their innovation towards the “enterprise startup” model as a magic bullet though enterprises seem to be the last ones to jump on the Web 2.0 wagon and if they jump at all.
Exit Strategies - During 2005 there were few acquisitions of very successful (in terms of user adoption) Web 2.0 companies for surprisingly very low prices in comparison to what you would expect from the respective hype level. This trend may raise very fundamental questions of the level of belief Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have in their venture future (Google was once a small startup too) as well as explains why VCs are not fully into Web 2.0. It might be still a residue of scepticism we have got left from the internet bust for businesses without a “milking cow” business model. I personally see these days as only the “beginning” for innovation and finging new uses for the Internet and as in every start we need to be patient.
As a bottom line, I see Web 2.0 to be the maturity state of the revolution initiated in the internet boom from the 90’s. It feels much more like picking ripe fruits of people who have established the web infrastructure rather then seeding them. Still, the fact that internet users have gained much more influence in guiding the industry direction can take “Web 2.0″ innovation to very interesting places.
Recent web 2.0 mentioning from my Google Alerts folder
Sun updates portal server for ‘Web 2.0′ addict3d
Reflections on Web 2.0 and 2005 corante
“This year has been exciting but Web 2.0 has yet to have a true impact on the average Internet user.”
Top Ten Web 2.0 Moments of 2005 blogs.zdnet
Topix.net Leaps Into Web 2.0webpronews
“Topix still mixes stories from blogs and news sources in its categories, but the shaded background used to identify blog posts has been eliminated in favor of a small white ‘B’ on an orange dot.” “Topix has continued to embrace tagging, a simple way of categorizing stories. Clicking a tag takes visitors to related stories where that particular tag, like “George Bush,” has been applied. “
Web 2.0 Won’t Mean New Version of Internet Bubble: Matthew Lynn bloomberg
Can Web 2.0 stoke interest in bigger things? blogs.zdnet
Web 2.0 Powering Verticals webpronews
John Battelle on Web 2.0 & Google imediaconnection
Web 2.0 Business Models webpronews
Joshua Porter on Web 2.0 corante
Is there a Web 2.0 revolution ? 7days
Yahoo!: Quiet Technology, Web 2.0 Power betadot
Yahoo: From Dot-Com Survivor to Web 2.0 Powerhouse eweek
Web 2.0 redefined seattlepi.nwsource
Web 2.0: Upgrade or Revolution? clickz
“Do I really need another personal home page?”
Joel Spolsky on Web 2.0: The Antihype Is Thickening corante
Overwhelmed by Web 2.0 realtechnews
Tech guru O’Reilly on Web 2.0 bbc.co.uk
From Enterprise 1.0 to Web 2.0 infoworld
Is SOA a ‘mini-me’ of Web 2.0? zdnet.com