SL2.0: Capturing Web 2.0

One of the problems with Web 2.0 that I want to openly address right from the start is an almost obscene reliance on words that don’t yet exist for most of the population. If you look in a printed dictionary for podcasting or social bookmarking you probably won’t find anything. One of the reasons for this is that Web 2.0 is just plain new. Another issue, though, is that this is a very fluid concept.

In September of 2005, Tim O’Reilly wrote an article attempting to define some of the developments that had been taking place on the internet starting in 2004 that had been loosely defined as Web 2.0. “What is Web 2.0” reviews the history of the formation of the idea and identifies seven key concepts for Web 2.0 (concepts from O’Reilly article):

1. The Web as a Platform: in Web 2.0, the web itself becomes the platform that makes various software “applications” like Google possible. Instead of following a traditional hardware system or software package strategy, Web 2.0 tools use dynamic databases to mine the connectedness of the web to harness user power for improvement.
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence: by creating information communities, tools like Wikipedia and Del.icio.us have turned to massive audiences and a supposed “collective intelligence” that builds on mob psychology to replace the traditional role of editor or expert. If enough people are collectively editing an article or recommending a website then the overwhelming average should drown out radical individuals.
3. Data is the Next Intel Inside: and in fact, Intel Inside fell in late 2005 to a new branding scheme. The idea here is that there is a single, powerful thing that makes the whole machine work. In Web 2.0, data is the central processing item. Add a few more user inputted data points to other data on a Google Map and now you have Frappr! The other key concept is the enhancement of data; Flickr isn’t just about photos, but rather about the “tags” that users have applied as keywords to describe the subjects of the photos.
4. End of the Software Release Cycle: in Web 2.0, tools are services, not products. I don’t have to decide whether I will buy Google or Yahoo! as a search engine – rather they have to court me to receive my business. This is a dynamic process (look at the development competition between Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps for instance) that involves my needs and my desires. Look, for instance, at the proliferation of blogs associated with Web 2.0 tools – for example the blog that covers development and status of del.icio.us.
5. Lightweight Programming Models: if you are going to stay dynamic in Web 2.0, you cannot keep up with Fortran. A new class of programming languages has emerged that focus on speed, interoperability, and hackability. Emerging since the article was written, Ruby on Rails, goes even further with this idea by having most of the coding actually done by your computer after you set up some basic tables.
6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device: one of the new words from Web 2.0 is “podcast” which came in to being as a word to describe an audio program that could be automatically downloaded and synchronized to an iPod MP3 player. Since Web 2.0 is about interoperability, though, podcasts work on anything that can play an MP3 file – from a desktop, to a handheld, to a cell phone, and even some new cars.
7. Rich User Experiences: Web 2.0 is about more for you and me. More features, more customizations, more convenience, more power. Tim O’Reilly uses Writely, a Web 2.0 online word processor, as an example. Writely showcases many of the previous elements: it is a tool that uses the web as a platform instead of being an installed word processor, it allows you to tap into the collective intelligence with public wiki-like editing, you have “everywhere” access to your data and can tag/edit as needed on the fly, it is developed with user input as opposed to being released on a schedule, uses the incredibly powerful new AJAX language, and pulls all of this together to provide a very rich user experience.

So Web 2.0 seems to be about using new tools to provide new services that empower communities to meet new challenges and fulfill new expectations. It is about tools that provide new levels of access to varieties of data that two years ago we didn’t know we “needed.” It is about…change.

In the next post, I will be exploring the specific changes, centered around O’Reilly’s seven concepts, that seem to be defining Library 2.0.

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