Web 2.0 (My 1000th (+1) Post)

[eKstreme]

What is Web 2.0? This is the question right now. So let's answer it.

(Note before I begin: I know a lot about this, but never articulated it well. A few days ago I attended a seminar by a VP at a top strategy consulting firm that very lucidly articulated it. A lot of what I'll write now will use his approach but I'll be fleshing it out more than he did - a lot more flesh.)

Web 2.0 is about four different interacting things (the guy said 3, but he missed one):

1. Community. This is the most obvious one. Community is basically interaction between members, between websites, and between the website admins and its members. In the old days, we had the BBS and then IRC and then forums. Now it's more of the same, but also extended in one crucial way: we are happy to share without claiming ownership. The best example is Wikipedia: no one claims copyright control over it, and so we are breaking the traditional authorship rights. When we contribute to Wikipedia, anyone can read our contribution, anyone can copy it, anyone can edit, and dang it, anyone can delete it. This is very new.

The other new thing is voting. Now we have popularity contests of our contributions. Our forums have reps, delicious has the popular lists, and of course digg is the ultimate voting system. If you think hard, you can also convince yourself, Google's PageRank is essentially an algorithm that measures social popularity (link = vote).

2. Technology. Here we talk about XML, APIs, new content management systems like blogs and wikis, and if you're that inclined, sure, AJAX. The new technologies support the formation of communities and the interactions I explained above. XML gives us RSS and AJAX. APIs are a more general term that gives us mashups, and arguably, everything else. Basically, it's the use of standard technologies everyone agrees on. This, IMHO, is the biggest "technological" breakthrough: actually agreeing on a technical standard!!!

3. Architecture. This is best described by the Cluetrain Manifesto as:

The Web has become the new corporate infrastructure, in the form of intranets, turning massive corporate hierarchical systems into collections of many small pieces loosely joining themselves unpredictably.

Essentially, we're talking about a more modular way to build applications. The (re)rise of Ruby on Rails and MVC model, along with other frameworks like CakePHP, is testament to this aspect of Web 2.0

4. Look. Every movement has a look: the 60s, the 80s, and now Web 2.0. Long gone are square boxes with plain boring color. No man, bring on the colors. Give me some jive. Don't be square. Lively and fresh is what we are. Why be something else? And yes, white space is great.

So this is Web 2.0 in a nutshell. Web 2.5 is in beta now and will be released shortly.

Apologies for NOT answering the original questions (I'll do so later). In the meantime:
[shameless plug]
My blog
[/shameless plug]

Pierre