Archives for March 2007

This post concludes the web 2.0 series. Other Posts in this Series:
So, you want to go web 2.0?
web 1.0
Web 2.0: All the rage?
Back to basics & the Golden Rule
In with the New.

In a nutshell, web 2.0 is: the golden rule giving rise to democracy, powered by AJAX. It’s got people talking and the moneymen are definitely listening in. Once again, the money is flowing into the internet. Yahoo bought flickr – which deals with online photo management; the seemingly ever acquiring Google bought youtube; and no one can forget the recent purchase of myspace.

What about you? Are you ready to go the web 2.0 way?

Now to bust some jargon:
Wiki – a piece of software that allows users to freely create web page content. Think wikipedia.

Folksonomy – internet based information retrieval methodology consisting of collaboratively generated, open ended labels that categorize content such as web pages, online photographs and web links. (Definition courtesy of wikipedia). Examples of folksonomies: digg, flickr and del.icio.us.

Web 2.0 is not a tangible, PS3-type, ‘new’ release of the www. No one directs or controls it; it arose simply because it is the simplest and most efficient way of using and doing business on the internet. However, there exists internet champions who realized the golden rule and used it to precipitate, in some way, the march towards web 2.0. For example, if you’ve heard of the Google story, you will quickly come to realize that Google played a large part in the web2.0fication of the internet. ‘Don’t be evil’ says it all.

Democracy Things web 2.0 reek of democracy. Just think about some of the features of web 2.0: the blogging revolution, open web programming. Self service advertising (think adsense), social networking, social book-marking… This is, perhaps, a natural consequence of the golden rule. Once you realize that the users are what drive the web, the power of the masses becomes a reality. The users not only use content, they also generate it. Fine exhibits of this phenomenon are flickr and myspace, whose users essentially entertain themselves.

Users not only generate content, they also decide which content is useful i.e. they get to tell other users which content to use. Ironic, isn’t it? This basically works this way: useful content gets ‘tagged’ by someone who likes it, thus making it available to more people (because it is now popular) who may then tag it some more, allowing even more people to see it and suddenly it has gone viral and everyone’s talking about it. This is the rationale behind reddit, digg, del.icio.us, youtube and many other sites.

AJAX This is the technology behind web 2.0. AJAX isn’t really a new technology. Asynchronous JAvascript and Xml is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The internet is to make web pages feel more by exchanging small amounts of data with a server, behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded every time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase a website’s interactivity, speed and usability.

AJAX makes the web 2.0 revolution possible. It unleashes the real power of java, which was previously an overrated underperformer. Now that java works, web developers can create truly interactive AND usable web applications that can take advantage of the golden rule and integrate democracy.

Other Posts in this Series:
So, you want to go web 2.0?
web 1.0
Web 2.0: All the rage?
Back to basics & the Golden Rule.

The internet and by extension the www was meant to be a place of freedom, freedom to share information and ideas in a totally unprohibited manner. This means that a website – any website – exists to primarily provide information and/or a useful service. Then, much later, the website may make money as a consequence of its usefulness (one hopes!)

How do you make your website useful? Remember the golden rule: when designing and creating a website, get your priorities right: you are making that website so that people may visit it and use it; you are making it for its users. Therefore:

1. Provide useful content. Visitors to your site should have access to this content in the easiest and most efficient way possible.
2. Make your website the best it can be without thinking, at first, of how to make money with it. It is often said that the most profitable sites were first created to enrich users’ lives and then, relatively much later, ways were found to make them earn money. Does Google or Craigslist ring a bell? Both started out with these principles.
3. Do not mistreat your website’s users. Let them come and go as they please, do not obstruct them with ads and other crap. Moreover, NEVER ask for their emails, names or for them to register with you unless it is absolutely necessary.

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This Post is part of a series of posts describing web 2.0. If you find it interesting, you may want to check out the rest of the posts. Not sure? Try read this summary of this series of posts. Otherwise, the other posts in this series are:

So, you want to go web 2.0?
web 1.0
Web 2.0: All the rage?
Back to basics & the Golden Rule
In with the New.

The dotcom crash taught us something, even if we vehemently deny it. After the dotcom crash dust had settled the only writing on the wall was: ‘It is all about the user’. No matter what you want to gain from your website, or the web, you have to realize that you need to take care of the people who come to your website; your website’s users. This is the golden rule of the internet. Try as you may, you can never change the intrinsic nature of the internet. And try they did: the rapid monetization of the internet and the www in particular was in complete disregard for what the internet was supposed to stand for. As we all know, this approach failed as it led to the dotcom crash.

Wikipedia defines web 2.0 as ‘a supposed 2^nd generation of internet based services such as social networking, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways’.

Coined by Oreilly media in 2004, web 2.0 was initially just another marketing buzzword meant to entice, enchant and pull out the money men (read venture capitalists) from their post-dotcom-crash bunkers. However, web 2.0 has come to mean something, as Paul graham points out. Web 2.0 simply means using the internet the way it was supposed to be used in the first place. I’m not too sure it’s a good thing to have a phrase describing what the web should be, but that’s just me.

The World Wide Web (www) is that part of the internet in which web pages can be found. On a typical web page, there are often links (hyperlinks) to other web pages, pictures, audio or whatever. On the www, one page links to another, which in turn links onwards to other pages, each of which links to other pages still. There is therefore, a ‘web’ of interlinked pages. (That’s why it is called the www.)

The www really burst into life with the creation of the browser. (You may remember the browser wars and the dotcom boom.) Basically, when the browser came into being, the web became much more accessible, hence much more useful – recall Metcalf’s Law. This precipitated an unprecedented boom: millions of websites were created as the www quickly commercialized. This was the dotcom boom. Unfortunately, this led to the dotcom crash.

The rapid commercialization of the www robbed it of its true nature. The internet was largely defaced and became mostly about money: it was, and probably still is, all too common to find thousands of websites that offered very little to the user but were nonetheless bursting at the seams with advertisements. I’m sure we all remember those large, obstructive, flashing banners and the all too familiar and extremely irritating flurry of pop-ups. The user, and website usefulness was forgotten and the original internet ideals of freedom and community were but a distant memory.

No doubt about it, web 2.0 has got people in a frenzy. Everyone’s looking at how they can jump in on the action. Nobody wants to be left out on what has been referred to as the next major internet attraction. All the while, some of us are still struggling with basic questions, while web 2.0 gurus abound. What is web 2.0?

join me in this series of posts in which I focus on web 2.0 and try to explain what is it.