Hey, I got the January post in just in time (that's JIT) to you programmers.

So, like a lot of things, the importance of Web 2.0 depends on who you are. If you're new to the term of Web 2.0, I've included some important links that help frame the conversation below. Its a difficult term to define. Some of the best I've seen define it as an attitude or thought process. They utilize the most compelling features of the latest software: the web as a service, exposing data that was once isoloated in a silo, enabling the network to comprehend data as well as you do, and applications that improve simply by having more people use them.

Here are a few brief scenarios of people who may or may not know the Web 2.0 stick came up and knocked 'em in the head.

Chuckie the 14 year old music enthusiast
Come on, Chuckie doesn't know what this is!?!? He was his rock and he wants it now. Its tough being a teen! Services like Napster and blogs are great for exposing people to ideas, concepts and points of view. Chuckie has over 200 people in his Instant Messenger list and he interacts with them every night after school.

Shawndell the housewife and online consumer
Websites like Amazon expose their data for others to consume and build upon. The plethora of services spawned by Amazon’s web service contributes to a rich market place of products and services available. Where else can you read up and compare the iRobot Roomba 4210?

Mystie the hardcore C# web application programmer
Well, it means Mystie has a good job for a while. No matter which Web 2.0 camp you're in, computer-centric or people-centric, you have to admit its not easy to build systems that run quickly, without errors and get better the more people use them. Mystie also has to get on her horse and start learning a ton of new technologies: AJAX, Web Services, Avalon, Indigo, and WinFX.

Alphonzo the designer
Zo’s realm of possibilities just got bigger; Photoshop is just the start. He’s thinking about interactivity, how to represent dynamic information that he’ll never see, like a movie review, instant message, or aggregated blog posts. A few years ago, he was greatly limited by how much could be accomplished in the project lifecycle. The frameworks that have sprung up in the past year have reduced the barriers to really cool applications.

There have been some great posts about this new word. I've aggregated some of them here. I've included the links to the website and some excerpts from the postings. I encourage you to follow those links and keep up on the conversation. Its sure to have some insightful nuggets beyond what I've posted here. They respresent a wide range of opinions and viewpoints on the definition and significance of Web 2.0.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

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? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.

In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0

DoubleClick --> Google
AdSense Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

What we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

The next time a company claims that it's "Web 2.0," test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name. Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html

• 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.
• That's a great definition, though it also seems that many people pushing various web technologies (AJAX) seem to think that's a Web 2.0 thing even though its been around for years. Your definition is the most accurate for what I'd consider the "true" Web 2.0 applications (del.icio.us, Upcoming, etc.) Posted by: Ben Bangert at October 2, 2005 10:05 AM
• Web 2.0 is definitely about people -- I believe that the central principle of success in web 2.0 applications is harnessing the collective intelligence of users -- and in my talks, I've often pointed to "the mechanical Turk, a 19th century chess playing automaton with a man hidden inside, as a metaphor for modern web applications, with programmers hidden inside them, performing their daily tasks. (See also my debate with Dave Stutz about how even these web applications harden over time.) I believe that time will show that Web 2.0 started out with exactly the opposite of Dan's formulation: "Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making technology more efficient for computers. Web 2.0 is about connecting people, and making technology for efficient for people.”

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/not_20.html

Tim Bray writes: 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.

• While being completely right in the details (we are quite arguably on 3.0 or even 8.0 if we're thinking about the internet compared to other software versioning), Tim 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. The reason that the term "Web 2.0" has been bandied about so much since Dale Dougherty came up with it a year and a half ago in a conference planning session (leading to our Web 2.0 Conference) is because it does capture the widespread sense that there's something qualitatively different about today's web.
• More immediately, Web 2.0 is the era when people have come to realize that it's not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web.
• You have to remember that every revolution occurs in stages, and often isn't recognized till long after the new world is in place. The PC revolution began in the early 80s, and most of the key PC companies and technology innovations were founded in that decade, but it wasn't till the mid-90s that the new shape of the computer industry was clear to everyone.
• Perhaps I'm biased, because O'Reilly was the source and has been one of the biggest promoters of the Web 2.0 meme, but I think it captures exactly where we are at this moment: a widespread awakening to the fact that the game has changed.
• There might be a better name (I tried "internet operating system" on for size starting back in 2000), but the fact that Web 2.0 has caught on says that it's as good a term as any. While the patterns that constitute Web 2.0 are far from completely understood, there's a kind of intuitive recognition of sites that are expressing the new model.
• I guess it's the old debate between language purists, and language pragmatists. The right words are the ones people actually use, and this word is catching on.
• Obviously I can't disagree with your definition of Web 2.0, with O'Reilly being the source... But what shifted my opinion of the meme from "hot air" to "something useful" was Ian Davis' suggestion that Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology.

http://www.nik.com.au/archives/2005/10/26/what-web-20-means-for-business/

• Tim O'Reilly, who describes Web 2.0 as an "architecture of participation"
• Jeff Bezos said "Web 1.0 was all about making the web easier for users to understand, Web2.0 is all about making the web easier for computers to understand".
• Web 2.0 is all about making software, web applications and a web service easier to inter-operate.
• AJAX is about making the web experience for a user as easy if not better than the desktop experience.
• Flickr and Gmail are not Web 2.0 applications – Web 2.0 applications have nothing to do with using Javascript, CSS, XHTML, using Web 2.0 colors and fonts but rather how the application presents itself to other applications
• The great Web2.0 applications will be those that take care of a small niche, and do it very well. A great Web 2.0 application becomes a module in a bigger broader solution while at the same time being an application that the user can also make use of independently.
  • Google maps
  • Google Maps Mania, a blog showcasing integration work. o As an analogy, it is like using standard libraries when developing applications – there is no need to write your own components when they are readily available.
  • The core competency at Amazon is their massive catalog and the breadth of metadata available with each article within the catalog. Amazon are adapting to Web 2.0 and are opening up their application as a web service. This service becomes a back-end component to other offerings that have added value in their own way.
  • Salesforce.com realizes that they are never going to be able to extend their application to suit every requirement of every customer. Their approach is to open up their CRM and allow others to develop interfaces that are able to speak to it.
  • If today you are designing a web application for Web 2.0, think not about how the user will see it. Do not attempt to implement a solution that does everything, and do not attempt 'one size fits all' solutions. A Web 2.0 business should rather think more about how they can take and application and work with other solutions, specifically piggy-backing off of large base providers such as Salesforce. This approach provides maximum value to your customer or user and allows a Web2.0 company to focus on one core competency and to be the best at it.