Wow. I’m a part of Web 2.0 and I didn’t even know it.
Tim O’Reilly gave his definitive definition of what is Web 2.0, an article that was just brought to my attention. What a fascinating read! The essence of Web 2.0 is the ability of site visitors to interact in some way. Examples of that are blogs where visitors can drop comments, shopping carts where shoppers can review products (Amazon being the best example of this) , and wikis where visitors can be the contributors and editors. O’Reilly calls this the “Architecture of Participation” which is the hallmark of a Web 2.0 site or application. Napster and BitTorrent are the best examples of Web 2.0 applications. Other 2.0 mentions were Flickr and, of course, Google. An early entry into the Web 2.0 arena was Ebay, which gives anyone the ability to sell (almost) anything, and allows users to leave feedback about other users, and which has now grown to such proportions that any competition will be crushed under the sheer weight of Ebay’s incredible membership.
One of the other hallmarks of Web 2.0 is what O’Reilly calls the “End of the Software Release Cycle”. He points to Microsoft as the prime example of Web 1.0. “While Microsoft has demonstrated enormous ability to learn from and ultimately best its competition, there’s no question that this time, the competition will require Microsoft (and by extension, every other existing software company) to become a deeply different kind of company. Native Web 2.0 companies enjoy a natural advantage, as they don’t have old patterns (and corresponding business models and revenue sources) to shed.” So if Microsoft doesn’t get it right this time with IE7 it’s most likely that the open source competitor, FireFox, will leave IE in the dust. The tide is already turning, and with bug reports already being filed on IE7 beta 2, showing it to be almost as buggy as its predecessor, I think MS is in for a rougher ride than they’re used to. Open source and GPL licensing is definitely going to turn the tide, with its “release early and often” and almost perpetual beta state. Open Source is proving to be much more adaptable to market shifts and user needs than Microsoft could ever hope to be.
RSS has revolutionized the web, and Web 2.0 sites are almost all rss enabled in some fashion and/or make use of feeds to supply/upgrade/update content.
Templated, dynamic, fully accessible, rss-enabled, compliant and interactive sites are what the web is looking forward toward. Hey, I’m there!
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, O’Reilly, Napster, BitTorrent, Web 1.0, IE7, rss
May 26th, 2006 at 9:52 am
[...] We all know that O’Reilly of tech books fame is the one who first used the term “Web 2.0″ to describe the way the web has matured and how interactivity between a website and its audience is the future of the web. The term, as a GENERIC term to describe the phenomena, has been used everywhere, even on this blog. So it came as a surprise to a small group of IT professionals in Ireland when their free half day conference, to which they invited Tim O’Reilly to speak early on, received a cease and desist letter from CMP, O’Reilly’s legal partners in the Conference, requiring that IT@Cork stop using the term “Web 2.0″ to refer to the conference. This letter came two weeks before the scheduled conference. [...]