A Place For My Head » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 – Revolution, Evolution or Marketing Slogan?

Web 2.0 – Revolution, Evolution or Marketing Slogan?

December4

The term Web 2.0 was first coined by Tim O’Reilly in late 2004 at a web technologies conference. In his paper ‘What Is Web 2.0 – Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software’, Tim O’Reilly identifies that “in the year and a half since, the term Web 2.0 was taken hold…there’s still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means.” In fact, the term as described by Tim O’Reilly doesn’t, like many important concepts, “have a hard boundary, but rather a gravitational core”. – meaning, there is no single set of rules which can really define what constitutes something to be Web 2.0.

But you can look at the bear minimum ‘requirements’ that make up a Web 2.0 application as being a “service” or an “experience” for the user. Where as before, the web – i.e; Web 1.0 was seen merely as a platform to advertise products/services a company has to offer.

In a sense, Web 2.0 can be seen as a set of collective ideas and participation take over from individual authorship. The web is no longer a place where the ‘dot com corporations’ dictate the course of the web’s development, rather it’s course of development is being dictated by those who use it.

In an article published by the BBC entitled; “The mash-up future of the web”, columnist Bill Thompson says; “Anyone with an internet connection can have their own web site, whether a blog or a profile on MySpace, and photo and video sharing is becoming the standard way to share holiday snaps or family events.” These ideas of creating your own blog (an online diary), and sharing your holiday photos online with others is becoming the standard now for all social networking sites.

By looking at this growing trend of people using social networking sites, it seems as if we are moving away from the “Information Age” – where the web was seen merely as a tool to find and communicate information, into an age of participation – where by the data and/or information is provided by the users for the users.

But this view is not shared by all. Nicholas Carr published an article on his blog ‘Rough Type’ entitled; ‘The amorality of Web 2.0’, where by he criticises the development of the web as being “more about commerce than consciousness, more a mall than a commune.” He also states that “somewhere along the way, the moneychangers had taken over the temple.” It is Nicholas Carr’s view that the web was meant to be something much more than it has turned out to be, a sort of “vessel of quasi-religious longing”, where by people “seeking to transcend the physical world, the Web presents a readymade Promised Land.”

But it is not only Nicholas Carr who feels this way; other people share this sentiment as well. In a BBC news article, Jaron Lanier, who popularised the virtual reality concept in the early 1980s, said “that in rush to forge a new age of collectivism, we risk losing individual identities and dumbing down our understanding of the world.” In particular his criticism is focused on Wikipedia, saying that “because those who participate do so anonymously, you have no idea what knowledge any of them have.”

Although this is true to some extent, and some of the articles that have managed to find there way into Wikipedia are a little bit more obscure than others, it is my view that more good can come of sharing and participation than bad. This idea can be best seen in Open-Source software, where by the code to a particular piece of software is available for all to see, and make changes to. This means that the development of the software is driven by those who use it, and therefore best understand its requirements.

This can also be said for the web. The only reason that companies are now starting to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon is because they recognise that this is ultimately what the consumers and users of the web want, and as a direct result – the companies are obligated to provide these services or risk falling behind to the competition.

So to bring me back to the main question; is Web 2.0 revolution, evolution or just a marketing buzzword? In my opinion, singularly it is not any one of these terms, rather it is a combination of all three.

The revolution being that as more and more people are using the internet, and are using these social networking technologies on a day to day basis, they are defining the path in which the development of the web will take. Because of this, people who are not “yet” (yet being the keyword) using these social networking sites and participating in the Web 2.0 experience will eventually join the masses out human curiosity. Evidence published in a BBC news article; ‘Social networks top Google search’ prove that this process is all ready happening on a day to day basis, as “Social networks Bebo and MySpace were the two most searched for terms of 2006 using Google’s search engine.”

But although it is this small revolution that is driving the direction in which the web will develop, the development of Web 2.0 itself has been an evolutionary process. In the early stages of the internet in the 1980’s, all the user would experience was text-based display, but as newer technologies and capabilities developed or ‘evolved’, the web has turned into “an all-singing, all- dancing multimedia experience.” No single person alone has made the changes to the way in which we are now using the web, it has occurred as the technology of the web has naturally progressed – and therefore the way in which we use this technology has also progressed and changed. It is this evolutionary process in software development that has allowed the web to become technologically capable of what it is doing today. This coupled with the revolution of the masses, has lead to the development of Web 2.0.

But is the term “Web 2.0” just a marketing buzzword, or is it really happening? The movement itself is happening, but I don’t think that this movement can be classified as an update of 2.0 – which would suggest an incremental change from one development to another. When you think of something upgrading from one version to another, in this case 1.0 to 2.0, these numbers are generally associated to new developments in the software. But this is where people argue that the term Web 2.0 is nothing more than a marketing buzzword, as stated by critics on Wikipedia; “Web 2.0 does not represent a new version of World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use Web 1.0 technologies”, with updated concepts and adaptations.

You cannot classify something which is an evolutionary progression of media, as being something which is of a sudden incremental change, ie; 2.0. From this I would be inclined to say that the term itself is nothing but a marketing buzzword that can mean whatever a salesperson wants it to mean, but what it refers to is a process which is occurring naturally, through the progression of the web.