Jason Slater Weblog

The idea of Web 2.0 has been germinating for quite a few years and these days the term “Web 2.0″ seems to be used commonly to refer to almost any Internet activity that needs a new spin, but in 2008 what is Web 2.0, what does it mean and should we care? Here are 42 things about Web 2.0 that I discovered as I explored these questions.

The Basics

1. What is Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is not specifically a thing but rather a set of ideas and technologies. Here is one example - Web 2.0 is a way of achieving and interacting: instead of having to go to a dozen or so web pages Web 2.0 allows you to have a single page (sometimes referred to as a dashboard) and add Web 2.0 enabled information to these pages (widgets). Some people believe O’Reilly and MediaLive came up with the term “Web 2.0” whilst others do not (“O’Reilly & MediaLive Didn’t Coin the Term - Web 2.0”) and if you read Wiki it will tell you that Web 2.0 means different things to different people, but from what I gather Web 2.0 is about people and putting people in the information driving seat.

So Web 2.0 is a set of ideas and technologies including social media, social bookmarking and social networking. According to CIO Insight, Web 2.0 is also Wiki, Blogs, Video over the Web, RSS, Podcasting, Second Life, Twitter and Mashups, amongst others whilst some people may tell you that elements of Web 2.0 have been around for a very long time (the recommendation system on Amazon for instance, or E-Bay feedback).

2. Where can I see Web 2.0

One of the best ways of understanding Web 2.0 and what it means is to see it in action – of course there are hundreds, thousands and possibly more great Web 2.0 examples out there. Elements of Web 2.0 can be seen in popular sites such as (in no particular order):

• iGoogle
• My Yahoo
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Wikipedia
• Blogging
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Second Life
• LinkedIn
• Slide Share
• NetVibes
• Spiceworks

More examples can be seen in my post: Social Networking and Social Media Sites

3. What Web 2.0 is not

Whilst there are plenty of ideas as to what Web 2.0 is there are also a number of ideas as to what Web 2.0 is not - here are some of ideas of what Web 2.0 is not:

• A brand new Internet
• Just a Buzz word
• A particular thing
• Revolutionary (it is more evolutionary)
• Finished - it is a transition - a work in progress - it will be a stepping stone to Web 3.0

Ideas

Web 2.0 incorporates a number of ideas, concepts and technologies. The ideas and concepts include social activities, information re-use, innovation and trust. These are explored in this section.

4. Meta-data

Meta-data is data that describes data. Tags are meta-data and there can be some confusion between tags and keywords. It is easy to think of tags as keywords and to some extent they are however where keywords are usually related to specific content (such as a subset of the words contained in an article) - tags are often more conceptual (keywords or tags or both). Wiki have a great introduction to tags at their site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata).

Digg is a good example of meta-data. Digg allows users to recommend a web page and add information to it such as an additional description, title and tags. In this way the original data doesn’t change but is enhanced by the meta-data that describes it.

5. Social Media

There is little fun in flicking through the photo album of someone else or sitting through their holiday video but we all love to get our photo albums and videos out the moment we get visitors – don’t we? Be it YouTube, SlideShare, Snapfish, Blogging, or Flickr - we love sharing. Web 2.0 is not necessarily the enabler for these kinds of sites but it certainly allows the content to reach a wider audience. It is amazing that we can drop selections of this content onto our own web sites or mix and match content in the way we want to. Historically, we had to hard code our own album web pages and you could forget video but now we can get what we want, when we want, where we want. The Web 2.0 aspects that make these things really useful are tags and feedback – but we will get to those in good time.

6. Social Networking

LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friends Reunited. Places where we can hook up with lots of people that we don’t know – and from time to time people we do know. Degrees of separation are interesting and popular factors in social networking – after all, we all know someone who knows someone, right? I read an interesting snippet once that said something like we are all at most seven degrees of separation from everyone else – so that means I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you! So where did my birthday card get to? Still in the post?

7. Social Bookmarking

Digg and Delicious, amongst others are ways of sharing information about interesting things that people say and do. Most people use bookmarks or favourites for remembering interesting web pages; collect this information on a massive scale and combine the results and you can now rank information by interest, authority, or popularity. What it tells you I’m not quite sure but it tells you something and that’s the important thing, right! Seriously it gives important information about what is being talked about and what topics are of mass interest. More importantly by using tags and keywords this information can be drilled down into specific niches.

8. Re-Use

Why re-invent the wheel? Ok, we all love re-inventing the wheel but there is a lot of information available so why not make use of it. Web 2.0 allows for applications to be broken into smaller and simpler components so rather than writing a huge all encompassing web site to try and cover all of the things you need –you can instead focus on doing one thing and do it well – then make it a component (or a widget) for others to share. You can pull in information you need, develop widgets, gadgets or anything else that grab you and assemble your own site. You may here the term “loosely coupled” that means there is a standard simplified way of interacting between applications. XML is a great tool to enable loose coupling. If you want to see the power of re-use then create a dashboard with iGoogle and drop a few components on it.

9. Trust

The establishment of trust, reputation and authority are major factors in Web 2.0. Relying on social participation requires high levels of trust. Trust, Reputation and Authority can be earned, either through buying and selling items or by offering useful information or interesting and original media content. Even search engines, which typically used to use keywords, are realising the value of trust and authority in their search results. Sites like Technorati are growing in popularity as more of us seek out places to obtain authoritative information.

10. Look and Feel vs. Data

The beauty of separating data from look and feel means the people who like producing data can focus on producing data whilst the folks that enjoy the creativity of design are free to do that. Instead of being at logger-heads these two now complement each other and if you like both aspects then you can still do that too. The look and feel can be generated through things like CSS, or Flash whilst the data can be generated through database tools such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, loosely coupled web services or even RSS feeds directly.

11. Breaking free from the desk

Many applications no longer need to be bound to a desk thus freeing people to work in a wider area; virtualisation and wireless technology has taken care of that. The next step is to make applications available directly via the Internet thus freeing users from working at fixed points. The one stumbling block is what to do when the Internet is not available so much work is being carried out to make Internet applications available offline too (and round we go again).

12. Innovation through Experimentation

We always need to drive innovation - my combining seemingly disparate pieces of information then new applications can be made and in turn new data can be presented – just look at the new phenomenon of geo-tagging images. Look at the work being done on Google Maps or MySpace and Facebook (or even Wordpress plug-ins) to see ideas, innovation and experimentations. Ok, some of it may seem a bit pointless depending on your perspective but innovation often comes through experimentation and nothing that leads to new innovation is really pointless.

13. Marketing and hype

Web 2.0 has a lot of hype surrounding it. It seems you cannot turn a corner these days without someone telling you that their new web site is Web 2.0 enabled but I don’t believe that true marketing is all about generating hype. Thanks to Jamie at Terinea for the pointer to the Zeus Jones Slide Share which describes participation in online communities as a powerful marketing driver. In the off-line world “word of mouth” is a powerful marketing tool and in the on-line world recommendations, comments and referrals are becoming just as powerful. Large companies are now beginning to offer products for review by Bloggers (just look at the number of Gadget Blogs out there) as they are becoming aware of the power of people participation which leads quite nicely onto people power.

14. People Power

You may have the best designed site in the world but if no one takes visits then what is it for? You may have the most important thing in the world to say but if no one can hear you then what chance do you stand? You may have an idea to change the world but if no one is listening … you get the idea?

Most of the time the power of the many is greater than the power of the one, be it offering opinions, feedback or technical tips to sharing the development of open applications, sharing media such as images, videos, written word or audio. Web 2.0 relies heavily on people and the ‘critical mass’ to get it going and sustain it so we could say that Web 2.0 is people and in particular Web 2.0 is a person, and that person - is you.

To be continued…

Coming in Part 2 and Part 3… Web 2.0 Tools, Technologies and the Future

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