Presentation deconstructing the "web 2.0" meme that was feverishly taking over the web following the widespread adoption of AJAX programming techniques.

1. Web 2.0
Is there a There there?

5. A colleague…
“The bottom line…reality is that nobody
really cares about the terms used to
make technology happen, the only
people who do are the writers…and you
guys got sucked in because you read a
lot.”

7. Tim Bray
“I just wanted to say how much I’ve come to dislike this “Web 2.0”
faux-meme. It’s not only vacuous marketing hype, it can’t
possibly be right. In terms of qualitative changes of everyone’s
experience of the Web, the first happened when Google hit its
stride and suddenly search was useful for, and used by, everyone
every day. The second—syndication and blogging turning the Web
from a library into an event stream—is in the middle of
happening. So a lot of us are already on 3.0. Anyhow, I think
Usenet might have been the real 1.0. But most times, the whole
thing still feels like a shaky early beta to me.”
Co-editor XML spec, founder Antartica sw, Director of Web Technologies at Sun
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/08/04/Web-2.0

8. Jeffrey Zeldman
“It soon appeared that “Web 2.0” was not only bigger
than the Apocalypse but also more profitable.
Profitable, that is, for investors like the speaker. Yet
the new gold rush must not be confused with the dotcom bubble of the 1990s: “Web 1.0 was not
disruptive. You understand? Web 2.0 is totally
disruptive. You know what XML is? You’ve heard about
well-formedness? Okay. So anyway—” And on it ran,
like a dentist’s drill in the Gulag.
A List Apart, HappyCog, Designing with Web Standards
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0

9. Joel Spolsky
“The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs
me. It’s not a real concept. It has
no meaning. It’s a big, vague,
nebulous cloud of pure
architectural nothingness.”
Joel on Software, Fog Creek Software
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/Fog

10. These are people I really
respect.
They’re smarter than me.
So why am I here tonight
talking to you about Web 2.0?

11. It’s because of the 2000
Census.

12. Google’s shared APIs are to the GNU vs.
UNIX debate what the 2000 Census was
to the English Only movement

13. Etymology of “Web 2.0”
• The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming
session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International.
• “Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far
from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever,
with exciting new applications and sites popping up with
surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had
survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common.
Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of
turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web
2.0" might make sense?”
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web20.html

14. Rebuttal
“Tim [Bray] is completely wrong about the
big picture. Memes are almost always
“marketing hype” –bumper stickers is a
better way to say it-but they tend to
catch on only if they capture some bit of
the zeitgeist.”
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/not_20.html

15. It doesn’t matter what you call it
• Open Source
• AJAX
• Collective intelligence/social networking
• Mashups

16. Seven Characteristics
(per Tim O’Reilly)
• Web as platform
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Primacy of data (sources)
• Continuous maintenance/improvement
• Lightweight programming models
• SW above the level of single device
• Rich user experiences

17. “Web 1.0”
“Web 2.0”
DoubleClick
Google AdSense
Ofoto
Flickr
Mp3
Napster
Britannica Online
Wikipedia
Evite
Upcoming.org, EVDB
Directories (taxonomy)
Tagging (folksonomy)
Personal websites
Blogging
Stickiness
Syndication

18. Web as Platform
• Netscape framed web as platform using
old sw paradigmweb browser desktop
app
• Browsers & web servers both became
commodities
• Value moved up the chain to services
delivered over the web platform

19. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
• Extending the open source philosophy
• Users pursue “selfish” interests & build
collective value as an automatic
byproduct
• Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc): Cornucopia of the
Commons

20. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
• Hyperlinking = foundation of webassociations
become stronger through repetition/intensity
(Google’s breakthrough)
• eBay’s product=collective activity, competitive
advantage-critical mass
• Wikipedia- “with enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow”
Eric Raymond/Open source software
• Folksonomy
• Peer production methods (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl,
PHP, Python)

21. Long Tail
• Chris Anderson Wired article (2004)
• Colloquial name for feature of statistical
distribution in which infrequent
occurences/low amplitude distribution
can cumulatively outnumber/outweigh
the initial such that in aggregate they
constitute the majority

22. RSS-Really Simple Syndication
• Remember “push”?
• It turns out that people wanted “pull.”
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~wdutton/comm533/pushtech.html

23. Primacy of Data
• Database management as core
competency
• Control of datasource
− NavTeq/TeleAtlas/DigitalGlobe root of
mapping; Mapquest pioneered in
1995competing apps by licensing same
data
− Amazon & ISBN

24. Classes of core data
• Location
• Identity
• Calendaring of public events
• Product identifiers
• namespaces

25. Release Cycle Obsolete
• Service ceases to perform unless
maintained on a daily basis
• Release early/release often
• Real time monitoring of user behavior

26. Lightweight programming models
• AJAX, RSS, HTML
− Barriers to re-use low
− HTML’s “view source”
• Lightweight business models—innovation in
assembly
− Dell assembly of commodity hardware
• AdSense as “snap in equivalent of a business
model”

27. AJAX : asynchronous javascript +
HTML
• Pages that interact with the server
without refreshingfeels flash-like
• Web standards
− CSS: layout
− XML: data
− XHTML: markup
− JavaScript/DOM: behavior

28. AJAX
• Standards based presentation using XHTML and
CSS
• Dynamic display and interaction using
Document Object Model
• Data interchange and manipulation using XML
• Asynchronous data retrieval using XHTML
HttpRequest
• JavaScript binding everything together

29. Focus moves from the single device
• iTunes
− Application seamlessly reaches from
handheld device to massive web backend
with PC as local cache/control station

30. Rich User Experiences
• Word processor: wiki-style collaborative
editing + rich formatting
• Project management via Basecamp,
Ta-da

34. Social Networking
• Power of weak
ties
• MySpace: more
views than
Google

35. Free tagging, Folksonomy,
Intersection of personal & public

36. Folksonomy: flickr

37. Folksonomy: del.icio.us

38. Folksonomy: del.icio.us
popularity
Solo/group
FIRST
Authority in numbers
Timeliness
relationships

39. Social Networking Meets Folksonomy

40. Social Networking Meets Folksonomy

41. Mashups
• Web app hybrids
• Seamlessly combined content from more
than one source
• Typically sourced from a 3rd party via an
API
− Application programming interface

48. What does it mean for us?
• UX Designers: wireframing virtually
impossible
• End of paper prototyping?
• More technical expertise required?

49. What *else* does it mean for us?
• You tell me.

50. Thank you!
Samantha Bailey
Director, Usability -- Thomson West
http://westlaw.com
samantha@baileysorts.com
http://baileysorts.com

51. References
•
Slide 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
•
Slide 3, 13, 16, 17: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
•
Slide 4, 30: http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php
•
Slide 6: http://www.ok-cancel.com/comic/123.html
•
Slide 7: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/08/04/Web-2.0
•
Slide 8: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0
•
Slide 9: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/Fog
•
Slide 12: http://www.gnu.org/
•
Slide 14: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/not_20.html
•
Slide 31: http://writely.com
•
Slide 32: http://37signals.com
•
Slide 33: http://google.com
•
Slide 34: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2005/tc20050719_5427_tc119.htm
•
Slide 35: http://flickr.com/
•
Slide 36: http://del.icio.ous
•
Slide 39: http://www.43things.com/
•
Slide 41: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
•
Slide 42: http://www.chicagocrime.org
•
Slide 44: http://randomchaos.com/games/fastr
•
Slide 45: http://newzingo.com
•
Slide 46: http://garbagescout.com