On What is, and What is Not Web 2.0

Executive Papers Comments (1)

What is Web 2.0 ?

 

Web 2.0 is more than technology; it’s about openness, sharing and relinquishing control.   It is a fundamental way of thinking about data, in that the owner of the data, cannot possibly think about all the ways –good or bad- that data can be used, but with enough users, force more good than bad effects from the data source.

 

Social networking is a very small part of the Web 2.0 schema.  For instance, Social networking is mainly about socializing.  While all data sharing has a social concept; the Department of Defense forum for Lessons Learned for Officers serving in Iraq isn’t about dinner and wine, it is about keeping soldiers alive.  Likewise, the interactive latitude and longitude map of known improvised Explosive Device (IED) locations in Iraq is Web 2.0 application which focuses on not losing vital Intel when solders go off duty and rotate back to the United States.

 

While many people do not understand twitter (a popular text blogging site) a user using an API is now sending arrest records across twitter using the open sheriff database.  A police officer or detective can now have every arrest sent to his phone, important if he has an informant he’s keeping tabs on.  He can have this same service in his car, but he can’t take his car laptop with him everywhere he goes.  If he could text back instructions on what to do with that suspect, from the field his ability increases immensely. [1]

 

Harnessing Collective Intelligence.

The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to … dominance in the Web 2.0 era.

·    Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users.

Tim Orielly suggests Web 2.0 strengths lies in the independency of linking and crosses over relationships, the “Drill Down” ability of the endless links.  Why is Wikipedia great? Because each article has multiple links to many other topics. Face book? Click on a friend, click on a birthday, find other people with the same birthday, find interests, find other people with same interest, and so on. What about a site like Politico.com? It aggregates other news sites, and you can follow their links, to other news sites, meaning a story can followed forever in a widening circle.

 

Ease of User manipulation: Trickle down Smarts.

Part of the Harnessing of intelligence is that someone one has never heard is doing his best to share his ideas with the world.  People who by day go to an office can and often in his spare time goes back to the web and creates a Facebook interface that shows real time location of friends flicker photo’s and locates it on Google Maps, and is able to be shown on any smart phone.  The motivations are many -needed the app himself, thought it was cool, proof of concept effort- but the ability to share it with the masses is what makes the entire project worthwhile.

 

Web 2.0 would not be possible without companies or project makers willing to make data accessible through API (Application interfaces).  The most popular sites release API’s and tools which allow the sites data to be minded based on rules set up in the interfaces, where interested parties (people, companies, developers) create mini programs to manipulate accessed data itself. 

 

Most of the users on a site are simply consumers of the world of the coders or programmers, but the shear number of ways and ease of use to manipulate what they find is what draws people to a site.

 

Web 2.0 benefits from silent people tolling away to enhance the data and then sharing with the masses; consumers who are always seeking ways to manipulate their links and connections to other people or their own data.

 

Key Drivers

 

Web 2.0 lesson:

• leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.

Web 2.0 principles: Lessons of Technology and Adoption Life Cycles[2]

• The service must share, and keep sharing, even allow its own content off site.
• The service automatically gets better the more people use it.
• Service must be easy to use for everyone interested in using it and allow new users to learn instantly.
• Service must help users interact with other users easily.
• The service content must keep evolving, and become more “robust” and mature.
• Speed of updates is paramount.
• Achieve critical adoption by targeted userbase.

 

 

Web 1.0 Static		Web 2.0 Transitional
DoubleClick	–>	Google AdSense
Ofoto	–>	Flickr – Allow users not signed up to view pictures. Allow the pictures to embedded elsewhere.
mp3.com – A simple website of MP3’s	–>	Yahoo Music – A search engine which finds all versions of a song, including video’s, lyrics, artist bio’s and Tour dates, all data from different other sites
Britannica Online	–>	Wikipedia – User generated updated on the fly comments
personal websites	–>	Blogging – With comments, Diggs, Links to other sites, trackbacks and facebook and Flickr uploads
domain name speculation	–>	search engine optimization  – Find most common, as a normal human would look for, not by simply Number of its.
page views	–>	cost per click –requires active user participation.
publishing	–>	Participation – Create books online, Self Publishing with printing your own covers, and getting your own ISBN from the Library of Congress
content management systems – requires website owners to update information	–>	Wikis – allows users who want to change the information to change the information.  Faster than website owner who may be busy.
directories (taxonomy)	–>	tagging (“folksonomy”), Stumble upon, Playlist.com, Last.fm, Pandoria  – users share things they like in common but don’t own the songs or articles they share
Stickiness – Networks produce TV	–>	Syndication – Studio’s sell any show to any TV and enables users to download from anywhere they have access
Fantasy Baseball static page checked  weekly		AZAX enabled fantasy game which takes in live ESPN and Fox Sports feeds updating on the fly.

 

What is not Web 2.0

 

As mentioned, a supposed Web 2.0 site can quickly fall behind.  MySpace is by all traditional measures a web 2.0 site, but it suffers from lack of use and innovation.  A flooded market can also reduce sites effectiveness still, these are not static.  However for a traditional definition, these are areas where the information is not only static it cannot be added or made, “more useful.”

 

The key therefore to Web 2.0 is interactivity and access; social networking sites usually lead the way in both these fields, and are usually the first people think off for “Web 2.0” examples; however, one must remember that email would be the 2.0 version of voicemail but it wasn’t until email on the cell phone that messaging achieved true Web 2.0 status, always there, every present.

 

 

Not Web 2.0		Could be Web 2.0 if
Doing taxes online		There is nothing to be done after that.
Observing Traffic Cams		This traffic Cam data was available to be linked to a Email, or put on a blog, and geo tagged to a map site so that one can have a visual route if traffic.
Photo manipulation sites		If the Photos can be manipulated or accessed from anywhere, saved, and sent to other people, who had the option of changing the picture or adding their own picture and commenting on them.
Most corporate websites (public facing)		Rarely do corporations want you to manipulate what’s on their site or their data.
Seti  Folding Data (search for Alien Life)		While useful for the scientific community, general user access and manipulation is not
Email		Email date links to calendars, and based on the context pulls up other relevant information, invites and cards.

 

In effect, anything can be remade to allowing users to work with the data, however, not all things area accessible.

 

OceansOfThought @ May 7, 2009