Web 2.0 appears to be receiving a lot of bad press recently. It’s pretty strange when you dissect what’s happening. The people bagging web 2.0 seem to be as taken by the hype as the people rallying for web 2.0. What’s up people? I think both sides are trying to satisfy some personal psychological need rather than objectively criticising the technologies and “movement” on facts.
Firstly, Web 2.0 to me at least, is the collection of ’stuff’ on the web that is pushing the edge of technology. Web 2.0 is on the fringe - where reality meets fantasy - and I think that says it all.
AJAX is only a subset of Web 2.0.
Examples of Web 2.0 sites include “Google Maps”:http://maps.google.com, “GMail”:http://gmail.com, “Google Suggest”:http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en, “Flickr”:http://flickr.com, “Del.icio.us”:http://Del.icio.us, “Digg.com”:http://Digg.com .
These sites can be all characterised by the feature that they are pushing the edge in their respective technologies. Whether it’s interface design (Maps, Suggest, GMail), social software (Flick, Del.icio.us, Digg), or… whatever.
Put it this way, “dogster.com”:http://dogster.com is a site that started not too long ago. It’s a social networking site for dog lovers. In fact, it started out as a bit of a joke. It recently turned it’s first profitable quarter and is kicking on strongly.
There’s certainly a lot of paw web sites out there (sorry), but also some very good stuff. Sites like dogster appear silly but are filling consumer demand, and making money doing it!
Even the majority of technology people I work with don’t use technologies on the edge of the Internet! I guess it’s “just their day job”.. ?
You see, the world is a bell curve with “technology use” on the horizontal scale, and “number of users” on the vertical scale. There’s laggards and front runners in the tails, and there’s the majority that form the meat of the bell. Currently, a lot of this web 2.0 stuff is sitting in the tail with the front runners, but _somehow_, business need to bring the technologies to the majority to be taken seriously.
The edge of technology isn’t vapourware, it’s merely a toy for us geeks. The edge of technology will always remain geek territory, but that’s where the great stuff starts, and eventually bubbles up to the majority. Those that bag web 2.0 are ignorant, and those that worship the hype are delusional.
