Is it Web2.0 Yet?
There’s a fair amount of hype these days regarding web2.0 and whether it’s real, over, or just another tech trend that fails to materialize. Google web2.0 and you’ll find a pretty deep list of links including a nice overview in Wikipedia. Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media characterizes web 2.0 as:
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform” (link)
Ok, that’s pretty cool but what’s he really saying, and what does it mean for the average user? I’m pretty sure business revolutions are rare, and I’m absolutely sure that web2.0 isn’t a true revolution. I do however think it’s a pretty significant evolution of what the web was intended to be in the first place.
Web1.0 was all about content and the ability to publish to a global audience with a limited amount of overhead. HTML provided a simple format for delivering words, pictures and other media and linking between documents. Browsers enabled regular people to consume this information without having to know much about technology other than how to drive a mouse.
Today’s web is still anchored in content, as it should be, but it is increasingly about functionality and what the user can do with the functionality and the content. To me the fundamental difference between web1.0 and web2.0 is the level to which the user is actually involved. Web1.0 users consumed. Web2.0 users contribute, or at the very least participate. User contributions are at the key of leading web2.0 sites such as flickr, digg, and youtube. While contribution has been around since the early days of Usenet, what we’re seeing today is a democratization of the level of accessibility the user has. You don’t need to be a geek to upload a video to youtube.
So it it web2.0 yet? I think so. Average people are interacting with web sites and applications as if it were normal, google is now a mainstream verb. My Mom probably doesn’t understand what cloud computing is, but she relies on the cloud every day for her email services, but who cares if she knows what it’s called. It’s become part of her life.
So if my Mom is using participatory web services and contributing content to the interwebs and relying on the cloud for her data storage and features isn’t it time to admit that we’ve crested the hill?
