It’s a bird! it’s a plane! … no its Web 2.0.
In the past few weeks, I have attended a few presentations on Web 2.0 at various valley forums (TIE, Venture Labs, etc.). In all of these, the definition of Web 2.0 seemed pretty arbitrary, often driven by a 'personal agenda' (i.e. whatever a panelist is peddling that evening), or professional alignment. But what really is Web 2.0 never became clear or consistent, even when some of these folks were challenged to define it--and that included the analyst on the panel (i.e. not just the peddler).
Are people confused by it or are they seeing it as an opportunity to define their own purpose? Is Web 2.0 an abstraction for anyone to sell whatever as they see appropriate? Is it a catch phrase or is there a specific problem being addressed through a set of related technologies?
I walked away either seeing some cool technology (ref: Zimbra) or realizing the success of paradigms (Wikis in the corporate or enterprise world, ref: SocialText). But I also walked away frustrated because no one could provide a satisfactory definition (some even avoided it) of Web 2.0. What must I expect the next time I attend a Web 2.0 forum?
So, I decided to offer a few possibilities on what it could be, based on all that I heard, saw and read. You can take your pick because it seems that any of these definitions will apply.
- Web 2.0 is a cool agenda for a conference, since we have had virtually no leadership or advances in consumer technologies (except wireless/mobile phones arena) in quite some time (we have missed a wave altogether), we need exciting topics for yearly conferences. We just can't keep waiting for something really 'cool' to emerge.
- It’s a way to get in the door of potential investors ('our product is Web 2.0 so we are cool and you should give us your money')
- It's a medal or ornament achieved via a certification process for your website (picture a cool 'Web 2.0 certified' logo or better yet, 'send us your website link and we will tell you if you are Web 2.0').
- It's a trend. As trends go, we do not need to understand them but just believe and follow (we are Eric Hoffer's True Believers)
- It's Wikis. They are invading the world. They must be Web 2.0
- It's AJAX. We haven't see such cool UI on the Web so it must be Web 2.0. The last time we saw anything like it was in the client-server world but that was unfortunately a bust and we don't need to go there
- It's whatever Google does. Their stock price alone defines Web 2.0. If it goes to $500 this year (hmmm!), it could be defining Web 3.0
- It’s a combination of AJAX, web services and social collaboration--whatever that means
- It's enterprise apps based upon open source, LAMP and AJAX, again, whatever...
- It's a stop-gap measure of feature/functions until we really figure out how to deliver user-friendly applications on the web, since we have consistently failed to do so for either the consumers or the enterprise (other than retail, search engines and porn).
According to one billing, Web2.0 is the next-generation of internet applications and services, such as Blogs and Wikis. Hmmm! I don't think so. There is nothing 'next gen' about either Blogs or Wikis. The fact that we are only now realizing that people want a simpler way to publish and share content doesn't make it 'next gen'. It simply means that the first gen was over-engineered because of our lack of understanding of what anyone wanted out of this technology. Overcoming initial failures does not become 'next gen' (or 2.0). I think we have regressed with these paradigms. I think that they are a fad and quite short-lived. (See future blogs for more details on why).
I also think that we should not care about Web 2.0. There are definitely some exciting applications emerging that exploit the web and that offer us some very interesting opportunities or insights with respect to where we must shift our creative focus, but we don't need specific labels to validate their existence or value. We simply need to recognize them on their own merit.
-Sanjiva, Orinda, March 29, 2006
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