2008 : The Year of Web 2.0

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2008 : The Year of Web 2.0

JAMES HEIN

As I mentioned last week that I am calling 2008 the Year of Web 2.0. Since an explanation cannot fit into a single column, this will be the first in a small series about Web 2.0.

Working backwards, let's start with a summary of what Web 2.0 can mean to an organisation and the core com- petencies required for any business moving in this direction.

While it might be self-evident, using the Web as a platform is the starting point for Web 2.0. There is a lot of information and intelligence out there and the ability to harness this collective knowledge is part of the process. This includes utilising your users as your co-developers by providing them with a positive experience that they can also contribute to and allow for self-servicing. The user interfaces and programming models need to be lightweight in nature and focussed on a more services based approach instead of packaged software. This also includes moving to a more lightweight business model and phasing out the old software release cycle process.

In this model the data starts to create itself instead of the older way of collecting and modelling data before presenting it to the customer. While this can end up as a hard-to-recreate data store, with control over the process these data stores will get richer over time as people use and contribute to them. At the same time, the software is no longer on a single machine, as such, but it is above the level of a single device.

So if you think that you are already a Web 2.0 company, or if you want to check if another one is, check each of the above items against yourself or others to see if the result is a Web 2.0 system or implementation process. The more of a match, then the better the Web 2.0 score.

You will also notice that programming itself was only a small part of the Web 2.0 framework. Web 2.0 requires more than the change in a few development tools, it requires a rethink at the fundamental business level.

Like all buzz words, Web 2.0 appears all over the place but in many cases all they do is throw in a few buzzwords that sound like Web 2.0 but if you look closer it may only be a small part of the process.

Consider the new Web site measurement and testing tool Application Perspective 5.0 from Keynote Systems for example. It is described as a way to more accurately test the end-user experience of Web 2.0-type applications. The idea is to emulate the browser to give a representation of the user experience. It can handle Ajax, Javascript and includes things like collaboration.

Now this product is probably an excellent testing tool and the evaluation of the end user experience is indeed related to Web 2.0. Note the use of the words like Ajax and collaboration - also aspects of Web 2.0. In the end, however, this is really just a better performance measurement and modeling tool. It is one aspect of Web 2.0 but not the whole thing.

This is why I believe that people are getting confused. They see small pieces of Web 2.0 and each one is taken to be the whole thing instead of a piece of the puzzle. This is by no means an uncommon situation and even very clever people like String theorists didn't realise that their five models were just pieces of the same thing - until someone who was very smart put it together.

This is what an approach to Web 2.0 requires, the understanding that Web 2.0 is a collection of tools, paradigms and pieces that when implemented together provide a full experience.

To this end I expect to see a lot more attention paid to the expansion of the current global WWW network. You may have concluded that connectivity is a key requirement for many of the aspects of Web 2.0 to work and you would be correct. For Web 2.0 to take off or to work it needs a much better set of connections between locations. This means faster speeds, more capacity and a lot of investment by all countries.

By the end of the year it will be interesting to see who actually recognised this and started working on the issue. I will look at more details around Web 2.0 in upcoming articles.

Email: jamesh@inet.co.th