Marketing Motormouth

We’ve all heard the name, we all agree (well most of us anyway) that it’s the future of the web and you’ve either been telling others, or been told, that it’s the best thing since sliced bread – by the way, is sliced bread better or worse than a well-baked fresh loaf and good quality bread knife?

Anyway, enough of this distraction, what exactly is web 2.0, is it any good, and do we really need it? And, when you know what it is and whether you really need it then I guess you’ll want to know what to know what to do with it. Web 2.0 is easier to explain by eliminating the things that it isn’t:

What Web 2.0 isn’t

1. It’s not a new operating system or browser
2. Unfortunately for programmers, it’s not a new programming language
3. Your web site doesn’t qualify to be called 2.0 just because it uses flash, rss, ajax, wiki or flckr
4. It doesn’t mean people, podcasts, digg, del.icio.us, YouTube the blogosphere or any one of the major social networking sites
5. It isn’t a web site that changes colour when you click on a new page
6. Neither is it a replacement for web compliance standards

Whilst web 2.0 may well include some of the things mentioned in this list, the only thing that is for certain is that the individual responsible for coining the phrase in 2004, along with his industry counterparts, have done their best to ensure that it’s definition remains abstract in what could be seen as an attempt to regain the programming salaries that were the norm in the nineties.

VC meeting rooms all over the country are jam packed with salesmen and their nodding spods repeating the lines, “It’s 2.0. It’s the future. Our projections show we’ll make ten zillion pounds next year.” I’ve been trying to extract a simple explanation from people in the know ever since the phrase was touted in 2003, but the trouble is that the higher up the food chain you go, the more nebulous the answer gets.

Whilst nobody really ever used the term 1.0 and snake oil salesmen tout web 3.0 as ‘web content using 2.0 as the base platform’, it only serves to confuse matters further. Let’s turn our attention to the ‘official definition’ to see if it clarifies Web 2.0 any better.

The official definition of Web 2.0

“Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.” – O’Reilly

Now that we’ve got that over with, have you finally seen the light? No! That’s good, because I wouldn’t like to challenge O’Reilly to a bullshitting competition. Many web developers often refer to it as software or languages used to build new web 2.0 sites including tag clouds, ajax and wikis – the foundation of collaborative sites. These technologies are fairly straightforward, free and easy to use, but their wider definition doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when looking at ecommerce sites, such as Gap’s, which doesn’t include collaboration.

Others talk about it being a collection of tools and sites that encourage participation, which is a little nearer the truth. Then there’s the view of some that it’s the modern day equivalent to the bring-a-bottle party, with online invitees all adding their own content to form a 2.0 collaboration. All the definitions seem plausible, yet talking 2.0 up as future technology isn’t really true when you consider ajax was around ten years ago. So have web developers got it wrong?

A difference of opinion

I don’t think for one second that web developers are devoid of an understanding of what web 2.0 actually means, it’s just that like with the term ecommerce, its definition has changed over time and it can mean a myriad of different things to different people. I’d say that the majority of decent web developers have their own definitions about 2.0, but they may not necessarily agree with each other. Nevertheless, they understand what’s going on and behind the scenes they are starting to get to grips with it much better as technologies become adopted and less buggy.

The trouble is that the more in depth you go talking about 2.0, the more difficult it is to fathom. Much of the trouble comes from business minded techies who missed out on the .com hype and are eagerly trying to dupe investors into offloading a cool million for a meagre chance that they’ll receive a big fat return – I hope those who are bare-faced enough to pull it off get their rewards, but I doubt that most of the investors will.

The talk wont last long and nor will the investors money when they realise that some of the schemes are an advanced yet legitimate form of the well-oiled 619 scam. Sure, there are still big returns to be made from web investments, however many of the best companies seem to be like vagrants – they usually come from nowhere. Before you reach for the phone and call your solicitor, I’m not saying that your particular 2.0 scheme isn’t going to be the next Google, just that there are many who are using it as a hood-winking exercise.

There’s a really easy way to describe web 2.0 in a way that everyone can understand, in that it is merely the natural development of today’s online culture of participation. Moreover, don’t let anyone tell you about it, ask them to show you online examples and you’ll be enlightened. Web 2.0 is simply another name for today’s Internet, it’s what web 1.0 should have been and, we use it every time we go online.