Not 2.0 From Tim Bray I just wanted to say how much I’ve come to dislike this “Web 2.0” faux-meme. It’s not only vacuous marketing hype, it can’t possibly be right. In terms of qualitative changes of everyone’s experience of the Web, the first happened when Google hit its stride and suddenly search was useful for, and used by, everyone every day. The second—syndication and blogging turning the Web from a library into an event stream—is in the middle of happening. So a lot of us are already on 3.0. Anyhow, I think Usenet might have been the real 1.0. But most times, the whole thing still feels like a shaky early beta to me.
Not 2.0? While being completely right in the details (we are quite arguably on 3.0 or even 8.0 if we're thinking about the internet compared to other software versioning), Tim is completely wrong about the big picture. Memes are almost always "marketing hype" -- bumper stickers is a better way to say it -- but they tend to catch on only if they capture some bit of the zeitgeist. The reason that the term "Web 2.0" has been bandied about so much since Dale Dougherty came up with it a year and a half ago in a conference planning session (leading to our Web 2.0 Conference) is because it does capture the widespread sense that there's something qualitatively different about today's web.
Where We Agree If you read
Tim O’Reilly’s piece back when he first published it, you might want to revisit it and look at the comments, which are voluminous and smart. While Tim gets a little polemical (says I am “completely wrong” and accuses me of being a “language purist” - ain’t nonna them round here, bubba) he makes one really good point: These are golden days, on the Web. The content is getting bigger and richer and deeper, user interfaces are getting better, and interesting new applications are showing up. His premise, basically, is that we need a name for this renaissance, and “Web 2.0” is as good as any, and it seems to be getting traction, so where’s the harm?
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He says “The right words are the ones people actually use”, and as one who invested years working on the Oxford English Dictionary, probably the single largest monument to that world-view, I couldn’t agree more. For those who don’t know: the OED never ever says how words should be used; it only ever describes how words are used, and never does so without supporting evidence.
Half the evidence is on Tim’s side: “Web 2.0” is getting used a lot. But it also matters—a lot—how people use it. And what I see in that department troubles me.
Niggles Before I go on, a couple of niggling points of disagreement: Tim uses the phrase “monetizing the long tail”, which makes me feel vaguely nauseous. I think that there’s business to be done out there in the long tail (for example see Side-Business Software by Jason Fried) but I’d bet most people who set out with the goal of “monetizing” it will fail. That was the 1999 disease—thinking about how you’re going to monetize people, rather than about meeting their needs and scratching their itches.
Secondly Tim says “Web 2.0 is the era when people have come to realize that it's not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web.” Maybe I’m just a geek, but I think it’s the data and the hyperlinks that are at the centre of everything; if you focus on keeping that as good, clean, and open as possible, the right software and services fall out. Like Sam Ruby says, “It’s just data.”
Niggles aside, Tim’s piece is excellent, in particular the paragraph beginning with “You have to remember...”.
You have to remember that every revolution occurs in stages, and often isn't recognized till long after the new world is in place. The PC revolution began in the early 80s, and most of the key PC companies and technology innovations were founded in that decade, but it wasn't till the mid-90s that the new shape of the computer industry was clear to everyone. The Microsoft-Netscape equivalent of the 80's was the debate about whether ATT's entry into the computer industry would dethrone IBM. The crucial choices had already been made, though, that set the course for the Wintel-dominated industry of the 90s. Similarly, the writing was on the wall when Yahoo!, EBay, Amazon, Google and other web giants were started in the mid-90s. We're now at a stage equivalent to the period in the PC market when people were debating whether OS2 or Windows was the operating system of the future.
Further Buzzword Reading
I believe in a Web 2.0, but everyday I see it existing simultaneously with Web 1.0 and the good old beta Web much the way a millionaire, working class person and a homeless guy can be standing together on a street corner.
Web 2.0 is California speak as is that strange sounding term meme, we used to say the thought I thought was not the thought I thought, but the thought someone thought before me. I live half a mile from Network 1.0, the first Telegraph, then we had Network 2.0 the Telephone and how about those wireless networks Radio and TV?
People do like to talk, we all learn from on another, thanks Tim and Tim, let's keep the conversation going all the way to this years
Web 2.0 Conference.
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