« The madcap laughs no more | Main | Pete Ashdown »

Web 2.0 review

Some Web 2.0 article links, with excerpts and comments...

"Too many CIOs fail to ride Web 2.0 wave" by Shamus McGillicuddy at SearchSMB.com.

"If a vendor is telling them, 'Here is our Web 2.0 solution,' that's an illusion that needs to be dispelled," said Ray Valdes, research director of Internet platforms and Web services at Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc., Valdes said. "Web 2.0 is not something you can buy and implement."

Some vendors are selling products labeled "Web 2.0" technology. But when it comes to Web 2.0, technology is just a means to an end. The real business value lies in what the technology enables: better collaboration among users. In fact, a growing number of companies are developing new business models to take advantage of the collaboration the technology empowers.

Valdes warns that while the products allows companies to build Web 2.0 applications, a company will also need to know how to use those apps to encourage the social interaction that is integral to the concept. It's "more than just the technology," Valdes said.

Regular readers of my blog know that I'm conflicted about the term Web 2.0 though I'm all about the participative, collaborative approaches that are inherent in Web 2.0 thinking. However there's a lot of confusion about the term, exacerbated by hype; the label could actually be useful if we had more writers lilke McGillicuddy, who get the reality behind the hype.

Consider that I recently saw a web development company's web site leading with the headline "What is Web 2.0?" There was no answer anywhere on the site; it was mostly about the company's adherence to web standards. They totally didn't seem to know what Web 2.0 was about, but they didn't mind using the term to sell services. Every time a company uses "Web 2.0" in a sales pitch, we get more confusion.

But I digress... more articles:

"What is Up with Web 2.0?" by Isabelle Chan, ZDNet Asia. Very brief, but clueful. Chan makes a great point about simplicity and usability.

These emerging technologies are part of the natural evolution of the Internet, where Web sites in the early days were largely brochureware and their content didn't change frequently. Today, blogs and community sites are the rage, because they turn Web surfers into active users.

But if the focus of Web 2.0 is on the online user and enhancing the user experience, then perhaps the focus of the next era should also be about making it simpler, easier, and faster. We seem to be piling on more features into everything, including mobile phones, computers and Web sites, without making it easier for the user to get to them. Give me a feature that doesn't require more than three clicks to get to it, or doesn't take me a whole afternoon to learn.

"Web 2.0 Social Web: who is in control?" by Donna Bogatin, ZDNet.

Whether it is MySpace, Wikipedia or Digg, it is the corporate, not-for-profit or venture capital backers that are firmly in control of the assets and the infrastructures of the Social Web properties that are making themselves available for "free" to the Internet community.

The relationship between Web 2.0 Social Web property owners and Web 2.0 Social Web user contributors, in fact, is inherently symbiotic. While each side needs the other, however, the relationship is not one of equals; Social Web contributors are dependent upon the “free” infrastructure graciously offered by Web 2.0 properties.

She's responding to Robert Young at GigaOM:

In other words, with social media, the consumers are in control of production, programming, and distribution … which is a complete reversal of the traditional media model. This reversal in control leads to some interesting consequences, the most obvious being the impact it has on the translation of core competencies within traditional media organizations (they become largely obsolete in the context of social media). But the greater long-term consequences of social integration involve strategic market development.

As social media continues its stunning incursion into the overall media landscape and usurps valuable mindshare, particularly from the younger demographic, the degree to which a traditional media company socially integrates into its audience is rapidly becoming the proxy for its ability to survive the future. But in order to survive via social integration, the players must first understand the real strategic implications of social media.

Many traditional media companies view social media as sort of a “farm league” and a promotional vehicle for Hollywood, one that will augment but not threaten their existing brands, copyrights, talent, and superior storytelling resources. This is a critically flawed view and it's reminiscent of the strategic mistake that AOL made during the '90s. AOL viewed the Internet at large as a wildly chaotic resource that they needed to tame and manicure behind its walled garden. To some extent, AOL treated the Internet as a subset of its proprietary service, positioning itself as the gatekeeper to what they deemed valuable and worthy. This is precisely the way traditional media (especially Hollywood) views social media today.

But just as the Internet was not a subset of AOL, social media will not become a subset of traditional media. In fact, social media will increasingly begin to compete directly with traditional media consumption. Yes, it is true that the media output produced and distributed by the audience itself will generally be of lower production value and quality. Even so, they will prove highly competitive to Hollywood products, as the personal engagement factor inherent in personal media outweighs any loss of production value.

I agree with Young. Unlike Bogatin, I think social media systems need contributors more than contributors need any specific social media system. They can vote with their feet, after all, and we're living in a world where a few disaffected MySpace cadets could bail and build their own social network if Rupert's minions decide to decapitate the goose by interfering with the community. Regarding AOL, Bruce Sterling once told me he'd met Steve Case at a party, and Case said exactly what Young says above - he saw the Internet as a seed community for AOL. We all laughed... that's just hubris.

"Paul Graham on the Web 2.0 Bubble" at AgoraVOX (man, I really did that name). Graham says there's no bubble (and I agree):

The companies the VCs are investing in now are nowhere near as laughable as the ones they were funding in 1999. A lot of those seemed like deliberate parodies. Certainly there is a lot of hype. For example, there are a lot of sites using cheesy “Web 2.0? design elements to seem cool. All those fades and “Betas” and giant fonts are going to look very dated in a few years. But cheesy design doesn’t make a bubble. The measure of a bubble is investment, and that’s still under control.”

“Web 2.0? is a weird phrase. It began as the name of a conference, but the people organizing the conference didn’t really know what they meant by it. Mostly they thought it sounded catchy. However, “Web 2.0? has since taken on a meaning. There are some interesting new trends on the Web, and it’s the nature of a phrase like that to adhere to them. It’s kind of like they printed the name on a sticky label, threw it on the floor, and it stuck on the heel of a guy passing by. The name is a little fake, but the guy is real.

"Web 2.0 needs to be agile to be successful" at e-consultancy.

Similarly, when implementing these new Web 2.0 features, most of which are becoming easier and more mainstream by the day, clients and practitioners need to bear in mind that both the rolling out and post-implementation work need to be agile in nature, if you’re going to get the best from these new technologies promise....any strategy which plans to engage users and draw them into a positive word of mouth spiral, whatever the technology underneath, must be implemented as quickly as possible and with as much involvement from users as possible.

jon posted this at 7:43 AM
Share on Facebook| email to a friend

 Subscribe to RSS feed for Weblogsky