I’d been hoping to interview Tim O’Reilly since starting work on the book. As the person widely recognised as having coined the expression ‘Web 2.0′, I wanted to know more about what he thought of the way it was all going. He’s a nice guy to talk to, by the way. He’s better humoured, but also grumpier than a lot of people that talk to journalists. In my book, that’s a good thing. What tends to happen is that the people you talk to are so “on message” that you can’t see a personality behind that glazed smile. He’s even older than me, too, which always goes down well.
Did you invent Web 2.0 or discover it?
Neither! It’s a name attempting to point people at something that existed. It wasn’t even me who came up with the expression. However, it’s an idea that I’ve been pursuing since 1997. I started talking about ‘infoware’, which is much the same thing, at the same conference [Linux Kongress, May 1997] that Eric Raymond started talking about The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Many applications and services that use the web as a platform (e.g. Writely) seem very different from those that use the alleged wisdom of crowds (e.g. digg). Hasn’t it been misleading to call them the same thing?
Web 2.0 is a catch-all term, for sure. But when I talk about the web as platform, we’re talking about using the network as a platform. And that does include the examples you point to, albeit with different emphases. This means a completely different approach to software development and to distributing that software. We’re still getting used to that and adjusting.
In the same way, the original PC applications were very much like mainframe applications. It took a long time before we arrived at the idea of shrink-wrapped software you can buy in a regular store. In the same way, we’re still getting used to the idea of what Web 2.0 means. The people who realise where the leverage points are will win. There’s a shift in power from software APIs to big databases. The people who own the databases will win. Those databases might be records of people, or it might be devices, behaviours or geographical information.
A lot of critics of Web 2.0 ventures point to flakey business models built on CPC advertising. Is this a fair characterisation?
Focusing on the failure of companies and ventures is always a big mistake. It stops people making real progress and draws attention away from what is successful. However, Web 2.0 is not about these bubble companies, it’s about the new approaches we are trying.
Most of the experimentation happening now is wrong. But by having those experiments it means we are learning what distinguishes the survivors. These new paradigms mean that there is a lower barrier to innovation. I think maybe the top ten of the Web 2.0 experiments that are big now will survive.
In any case, I think bubbles are a good thing. That’s how you get capital redeployed.
There’s a lot of controversy at the moment about paying the users of, or contributors to, Web 2.0 applications. What’s your take on that?
It’s what we ultimately have to figure out. The applications have to give the users a payback of some kind, whether that be in the experience or the outputs they get from them, If the applications aren’t working well in that way for users, then they’ll want to get paid in cash. There’s more than one answer.
To what extent do you think that Web 2.0 principles like communities, social networking, openness and software-as-a-service will become a permanent feature of the internet?
Communities and social networking have always been with us on the internet and they always will be. However, I think that other things will change. It will become harder and more closed. It’s like when the internet first started, everyone was equal, then barriers started to appear. Access to data will become more guarded in Web 2.0, I think, and so there’ll be fewer, more powerful players as time goes by. That’s not so true of the software, where I think openness is a lot more important to success.
How long do you think the term Web 2.0 will last before we start talking about something different?
I originally thought is was good for a couple of years. Now, I think it’s probably got another four to five years in it. There’s still a lot to talk about and learn.
Is that something different the semantic web?
Hmm. Before we had the web, there was going to be something called Open Systems Interconnect (OSI). It had been researched by all the top academics and was mandated by the government. It was a lot more comprehensive and clever. There wouldn’t have been things like 404 errors or out-of-date pages.
Then came along this crappy thing called the internet. And, as it turned out, though it was inferior to the OSI in many respects, it was good enough for most people, and as we know it’s never looked back. I think the academics think way too hard about these things. In a lot of ways, worse is better.
That’s not to say that I think the semantic web people have got it wrong. They have a lot of ideas that are right. However, I believe that Web 2.0 is already the semantic web. We are building meaning into the pages. Ultimately, people will solve the problems that need solving and ignore the little things that don’t bother anyone. Only the solutions that offer value to lots of people will be propagated.
As a publisher, doesn’t this boom in self-publishing make you uneasy?
Inasmuch as it does threaten what we do, so that has to change. People buy much fewer reference books than they used to, so we don’t publish as many. But we’re also interacting with this movement. We’re doing more to build interactivity into our books, even building Web 2.0 apps ourselves to extend the book experience onto the internet. Make magazine is closest to our new model. That was put together by people we found on the internet who had something new and different to share. We can help them do that. We’re also experimenting with using internet wikis as a way of putting together books.
The role of the publisher is in selecting and adding value to information, and the need for that won’t go away. Our business is changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. However, as with all this stuff, there’s going to be a period of upset and disruption before we discover the new rules.
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Social tools, devices and web evolution are creating epochal change in media, society and business. The plan is to 
Great scoop Ian.
“I originally thought is was good for a couple of years. Now, I think it’s probably got another four to five years in it.” Heavens above – in four years we are going to be soooo bored of that phrase…
Who knows? I do think that people will stop talking about these things as they become the norm, though. Which seems to be happening pretty quickly.