Web 2.0: Research Report
From English 194 Wiki Site
By Daley Tocher
12:29, 6 June 2006 (PDT)
Contents |
Abstract
To some, Web 2.0 is just a buzzword. To others, a way of life and business. Regardless of how one feels about the term itself, it is now necessary to understand, witness, and participate in a paradigm shift that the World Wide Web is undergoing. As form and content are being separated, more and more individual minds are being invited to take part in internet usage. This new era of the internet arranges applications to be designed and organized by a very technologically savvy few. The average user is freed from the shackles of learning the tech aspects of web design which allows many more authorial voices to take part in the content creation. A truly egalitarian online society may be the result.
Description
Web 2.0 is a term used to describe the new direction internet design has taken to include more people in content creation. It was first used by Tim O'Reilly in late 2004 as the name of a conference he was hosting to discuss the new direction the web was moving in. The conference mostly discussed the idea by providing examples of Web 1.0 services and their Web 2.0 counterparts and what about them was different. A prime example is Britannica Online vs. Wikipedia.
Definition
Tim O’Reilly, head of O’Reilly Media and founder of the conference series that gave Web 2.0 its name defines his concept as:
“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.”
The blogosphere (a wholly Web 2.0 term/realm) was quick to write this definition off as too wordy. To simplify, Ross Mayfield offered his definition as:
"Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people.”
This is Web 2.0 at its core. When the web first materialized, it was hailed as revolutionary in the freedom of creativity that it encouraged. It seemed like anyone could self-publish… and this was true when compared side-by-side with the previous model of print publishing. Limitations were abound. First you had to acquire a computer, then an internet connection, then lease a web space, then learn HTML, and somehow generate enough readership for all your efforts to even matter in the first place.
That was then, this is now. Ten years down the road a few technological and infrastructural changes have occurred that paved a foundation for the next leap in the way the web is run. Computers become less expensive and thus more common, storage space becomes cheaper and more prevalent, and the internet finds ways to make money through advertising so the user isn’t just paying for online services.
The Hype
A witty critic once described Web 1.0 as a large set of unfinished HTML sites and Web 2.0 as a set of unfinished content delivery programs. He said that this:
...and that:
When one Googles (rest easy, it’s a verb now) “web 2.0”, there are 84 million results. The average English literature scholar might shudder at the thought that “william shakespeare”, one only gets 18.5 million hits. More than just interesting statistics, these findings are indicative of several rather meaningful points: 1) online culture is looking ahead more than behind; “web 2.0” is more than 4.5 times as common in websites as the most influential writer the English language will ever see, 2) traditional literary criticism and thought might be printed in books more than published online, 3) while Shakespeare has been around since the 1500’s, Web 2.0 came about in 2004; that means the web is moving significantly faster than the bard, 4) creativity and authorship must look both online and look toward the future to maintain a strong foothold in the field of content publishing and to avoid reducing themselves to merely a specific flavor of historical studies.
It’s no small news that much of the web is based on hype and indefinable notions of what is or isn’t cool at the time. Web 2.0 is surely a buzzword. It’s limiting to write it off as only a buzzword, though. It reflects a rather radical and widespread change of online publishing; from type to music to video and beyond.
Almost as cliché as Web 2.0 within internet circles is the groundbreaking 1967 text by Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the MASSAGE.
During the dot-com boom of Web 1.0, many of the forerunners adopted McLuhan's media theory as the basis for what they thought the online world would be all about. Web 1.0 just scratched the surface. The true relevance of McLuhan's theories are just now being discovered as we enter the second-generation of the net. Fact of the matter is about a year ago, USA Today reported that there were around 10 million active blogs. The global community is now.
Web Examples of 1.0 vs. 2.0
Though now an annual occurrence, the first Web 2.0 Conference in 2004 was largely concerned with observing and defining prevalent trends in how successful internet products and services operate. The thinkers at the conference would look at a field of online business (such as advertising, photo sharing, file sharing, etc.) and pick apart the business model of both the old, established leader in the field and the model of a newer upstart company that was stealing from the first corporation’s market share. It was from there that a working definition of Web 2.0 was proposed and how it was evolving as a whole. Some key observations that were made at the first conference included:
Advertising: DoubleClick vs. Google AdSense
DoubleClick is still the largest online advertising firm, though Google with its AdSense software is quickly gaining ground. The two work in fundamentally different ways that reflect the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0.
DoubleClick software is cookie and pop-up based. The software installs cookies on a host machine and tracks content previously viewed from that computer as a basis for which ads to deliver. Most of the assigning of what advertisements to send to which computers is done by people programming the database. The DoubleClick Company has 1,500 employees.
AdSense on the other hand delivers advertisements that are embedded into the content of what the machine is currently viewing. Further, the advertisements run off keywords found in that content and cater directly to the information that the view is looking at precisely in the moment they are looking at it. Google has just over 6,000 employees, but only a small fraction work in the AdSense department.
The functional difference in AdSense is that a friendlier and less aggressive form of advertising is delivered and is thus considered more effective. Also, because of the use of tags and keywords, the software is entirely computer driven which allows Google to spend less human resources on monitoring the program and more on making the software that runs it better. These differences are at the heart of the Web 2.0; smart, automated software based on tags.
Social Networking: Friendster vs. Myspace and Facebook
While Doubleclick and Google Adsense are still fighting a war for #1 advertising programming, Friendster has all but thrown in the towel in its fight with Myspace in the ring of online social networking.
The reason Friendster lost the battle revolves around policy; specifically their rigid Web 1.0 policies. Friendster was allegedly made as a social experiment to see who was connected with whom socially. Their vision was short. People started creating fake-sters, rather: profiles that are made of pets, celebrities, or fictional characters. When these popped up, which they often did, the administration would delete them.
Enter alternatives. Both Myspace and Facebook take into account the desire to represent personality on the web. They both have group and interest features, which are in essence tag code that links one person to others who share their interest, regardless of them being within social contact of each other. Further, on Myspace organizations and group pages can be made. These features both represent a flexibility of code that meets the desires of the user. Web 2.0 policy and code beat out Friendster.
Alexa web traffic lists Myspace.com and Facebook.com as the 3rd and 17th most visited sites on the internet. Friendster, despite starting the race sooner is 56th and falling.
For more information on social networking, see Collaboration on the Internet:Social Networking Websites.
Image Hosting: Imageshack.us vs. Flickr
A battle similar to social networking is that of image hosting. The two most key players right now are Imageshack and Flickr. Imageshack was one of the first photo hosting sites, online since 2003. Flickr followed shortly after in 2004. The difference between these websites, and the difference in their success is a philosophical one.
Imageshack limits the size of all posted images. Further, a user uploads an image without an account or anything really tracing the image to them. On the surface, this seems very efficient and useful for the purpose of hosting pictures for people without a dedicated webspace. But, Imageshack falls short of Flickr. Why?
Tagging and personal space. The amount that Flickr allows is vast in comparison to Imageshack. Further, all your photos are attached to you account, but that's not all. You can tag your images with keywords that can then be searched for on the Flickr site by other users. This transforms the use of image hosting from a strictly personal one to a service used for both image storing and image retrieval. Again, Web 2.0 wins based on design.
Web 3.0, Web 4.0... Web 231.2, etc.
When Tim O’Reilly hosted the first Web 2.0 Conference, he literally opened a virtual Pandora’s Box. Before the conference, the internet just was. Nothing was Web 1.0 until the first time something was considered Web 2.0. This raises problems for the future. Web 2.0 gets 84,000,000 Google hits. As of now Web 10.0 gets 321 hits. With 5-6 times more bandwidth than the United States and websites like Cyworld that are fully functional from cellular phones, South Korea claims to already be in Web 4.0. With the Web 2.0 paradigm a reality, has the entire World Wide Web been reduced to a single functional program?
