I have come to avoid talking about this stuff with people. The first question anyone asks me is “what is Web 2.0?” Unfortunately for the ensuing conversation, it’s a little tricky to provide a straight answer. Every time you find a neat expression for summing the whole Web 2.0 thing up, I immediately think of an exception, or three, or ways that the definition doesn’t really get us anywhere.
In the list that follows, I’ve taken a lot of these characteristics or definitions from Tim O’Reilly’s What is Web 2.0?, and also Paul Graham’s Web 2.0 and Jason Fried’s user survey about the term.
1. The wisdom of crowds: We’re thinking here of things like digg that harness collective judgements to decide the importance of news stories. People talk about the power of ‘network effects’ when they’re keen on this definition. Google Search works like this by using the number and quality of inbound links to decide a page’s importance. But the whole idea does not apply to Google Maps, or any of the other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) crowd e.g. Basecamp, Writely, 30boxes, etc., which are nonetheless thought of as being Web 2.0. Nor does it apply to social networks that are just about developing and maintaining friendships, like MySpace, though they do benefit from network effects, of course.
2. Shared Web Applications. One of the definitions from Jason Fried’s list and quite promising. Almost the opposite of our first definition, since it quite clearly applies to things like Basecamp, Writely and 30Boxes. However, there are some Web 2.0 applications that have no social element whatsoever, e.g. Pandora, Google Maps, Orchestrate, goowy. I’m also struggling with the idea of web applications. I can see why digg and Google Search are applications, but to have this as a defining feature of Web 2.0 would mean classifying MySpace as an application. And if I allow that, then almost any web site becomes an application.
3. Web as platform: It’s hard to know where this one starts and ends. In some sense, every web page is using the web as a platform. For Tim O’Reilly, who came up with this explanation, it means services that could not exist without the web, and he’s thinking of things like eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype and Dodgeball. For me, that means that every online community could fall into this category. Are message boards and usenet Web 2.0? Most people would say not. Too broad.
4. User Participation: This is about the pointing out the differences between old-fashioned newspaper and magazine sites and new services like YouTube, flickr, and OhMyNews where the consumers are also the creators. The expression ‘Read/Write web’ crops up among proponents of this definition. Again, it’s rather too broad, so it could equally apply to message boards, but also too narrow in a different way, since it misses the SaaS sites.
5. Rich User Experience: Web 2.0 sites use CSS, AJAX and other technologies to enhance usability and create dynamic pages able to display more information in the same space. But hang on, the default MySpace page is probably one of the least “rich” imaginable. Oh, apart from craigslist. And until they introduced search term prediction earlier this year, Google Search didn’t use any fancy presentation technologies at all. Also, the presence of an AJAX-enhanced shopping cart on an etailer site doesn’t really capture what people mean by Web 2.0. Dell.com, for example, has had a ‘live’ shopping cart for years. It’s a good cart, but Web 2.0?
6. Marketing Buzzword: This is what all the sceptics say. So Google Search and Amazon and eBay and craigslist, all of which are believed to be Web 2.0 applications, because they match some of the other characteristics I’ve described here, are just some sort of modern fad that’s going to fade away, are they? The same thing goes for anyone who wants to describe Web 2.0 as “the new stuff on the web”. I do agree, incidentally, that Web 2.0 has become a marketing buzzword, it’s just that I think that it’s also more than that.
7. Data is the next Intel Inside: Though it’s a bit of a mouthful, I actually quite like this one. Again, it’s from the O’Reilly paper. Data management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies. “SQL is the new HTML,” is another quotation from the paper along these lines. All the Web 2.0 crowd, and we can go from giants like Amazon and Google to startups like 30boxes and Orchestrate, operate mainly from databases to contain and present personalised views on that data. There’s two problems here: (a) data management isn’t quite such a sexy idea as people would want and (b) a lot of the Web 1.0 companies were also about finding clever ways to use databases e.g. Altavista, Lastminute.com.
8. Permanent Beta: Web 2.0 applications are re-released, re-written and revised on an ongoing basis, putting paid to the yearly release cycle that characterised earlier software development. Most Google applications, for example, are still in Beta. flickr is rumoured to sometimes be revised every 30 minutes. MySpace and the other social networks add extra features every couple of weeks. I think that this is a clear characteristic of Web 2.0 apps. But it’s also become a feature of mainstream applications. Windows and MacOS, for example, get new fixes and patches every month. Antivirus programs are updated every day, but they aren’t Web 2.0, are they? The same thing goes for ‘lightweight programming models’. Also, I think people mean more by the term than the way in which it’s programmed. Most users couldn’t care less, they just want it to work well.
9. Using the web as it was meant to be used: This one is from Paul Graham’s essay on the subject. He’s referring to the increases in usability that are achieved through very good design as well as things like AJAX, but also by allowing users to develop their own ways of organising the information they have, the way del.icio.us and flickr do. Again, I have a couple of problems here. Firstly, it’s a bit loose: I’m sure that there were always some very well-designed sites that worked exactly as you wanted them to. The old (and now defunct) UK train timetable site was a perfect web app in many senses: it got you train times quickly and easily. But no-one would call it Web 2.0. Second, it’s a little self-satisfied as a definition and implies we’re reaching an end-point. A lot of the sites described as Web 2.0 have quite clearly got it wrong.
10. Nothing: One of the more popular answers in Jason Fried’s user poll. It’s a hard one for me to evade given that I have just come up with counter-examples or objections to all the definitions I’ve been able to find. Still, I resist the idea that this is nothing. Here are two answers to the question I think are true. (a) A Web 2.0 application, site or service will have a combination of the features given above. Just as black and white aren’t satisfactory for describing the colour of everything, neither is Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0. It isn’t a binary division of the web, or a revolution. Instead, we have a spectrum. Those sites and services which satisfy a number of these criteria or characteristics are more Web 2.0 than those which don’t. That is not a value judgement, of course. Sites with no Web 2.0 features can still be wonderful. Sites with a lot of them can be awful. Also (b) Web 2.0 is still too young as an expression to have reached the point where we have consensus about what it means. It means different things to different people at the moment. It may only be with hindsight that we come to be able to narrow things down enough to be able to say what it was in one sentence.
[...] Estas perdido con tanto que nombran y dicen web 2.0. Esquizopedia te trae una buena ayuda para hacer tu tarea de informática (suponiendo que llegaste aquà por san Google). Las 10 definiciones de WEB 2.0 (en ingles, no pensarÃas que encontrarÃas la tarea completa, traducida al español) Sin comentarios + [...]
[...] Dave commented to me on an earlier post that a key defining feature of Web 2.0 applications is many-to-many communications. I’m still not sure it covers everything we mean by the term, but it’s a helpful tool for each of these first three examples. [...]
[...] 10 definitions of web 2.0 and why they don’t always fit.read more | digg story [...]
[...] Maar alle definities zijn weerlegbaar, zoals het artikel 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings doet. Hij weerlegt hier dat er 1 bepaalde definitie is voor een Web 2.0 applicatie. Hij zegt dat een site met meerdere definities meer Web 2.0 dan eentje die niet aan deze definities voldoet. Ook zegt hij dat Web 2.0 nog te jong is een uit te leggen wat het werkelijk is. [...]
[...] For the last few weeks, after encountering a couple of blog-posts on the subject, I’ve been mulling over this concept of “web 2.0.”  I am wondering why and how the term carries so much (at least in the blogosphere) currency right now, and fascinated by the myriad of recent posts that attempt to define what is, and (even more interestingly) what is not, web 2.0. (Anne 2.0; Anshu Sharma; Ian Delaney; Stephen Downes to refer to just a few) [...]
[...] 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings at twopointouch … Annotating the next generation of the web. A blog about Web 2.0. … 25 Email is Broken at twopointouch: web 2.0, blogs and social media … [...]
[...] 10 definitions of web 2.0 and why they don’t always fit.read more | digg story [...]
[...] 10 definitions of web 2.0 and why they don’t always fit.read more | digg story [...]
[...] http://twopointouch.com/2006/08/17/10-definitions-of-web-20-and-their-shortcomings/ [...]
Nowadays More And More Web 20 Applications Appear On The Internet Like MySpace A…
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[...] Es gibt viele Definitionen von Web2.0. Diese Liste von 10 Charakteristikas, erstellt von twopointouch, fasst es gut zusammen, aber auch die Kommentare sind interessant: 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings Tags: Web2.0 « Web Crimes [...]
[...] Eine einheitliche Definition für den Begriff “Web2.0” zu finden ist schwer. Als Grundlage für eigene Erklärungen kann die Zusammenfassung von Ian Delaney dienen: 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings. In dem Artikel nennt Delaney Web2.0-Eigenschaften wie “Die Weisheit der Masse”, Nutzerbeteiligung und “Permanenter Beta-Status”. [...]
I’d say Web 2.0 is the single most interesting development of the new internet technology with no one really knows what it is.
Check it out at http://www.profy.com/2006/10/29/still-with-web-20-definition/
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[...] I’ve written about this at some length before. If no-one agrees about what Web 2.0 is – and believe me, they don’t – doesn’t that mean it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes? That there’s ‘nothing there’? Not really. Things that are quite big and complicated are very difficult to define and people disagree about them. Philosophers have spent at least 3000 years attempting to define ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘beauty’, and ‘knowledge’. They are things that most of us would agree exist yet we can’t seem to get a handle on their precise meaning. The typical philosopher is pretty bright, but can they agree? Can they heck. [...]
Luogo interessante, buon disegno, lo gradisco, signore! =)
[...] Weblog Facilities Nowadays more and more web 2.0 applications appear on the internet, like MySpace, flickr and YouTube which share some similar characteristics: Web as platform, User Participation (the consumers are also the creators) and Rich User Experience (CSS, AJAX and other technologies to enhance usability). Here is a popular article in del.icio.us about the definition of web 2.0: 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings. Today I will focus on the blogsphere. I. Blogging Platform Providers For good availability and reliability, you can choose a blogging service provider. Personally I would recommend the following providers. http://spaces.live.com/ (Good integration with Live Messenger and Microsoft products)http://www.blogger.com/ (Hosted by Google, should be the first blogging service provider in the history)http://wordpress.org/ (Provide Akismet, a good comment anti-spam service)http://www.typepad.com/ (This is a famous commercial service provider) If you are a technical guy and know .NET quite well, CommunityServer 2.1 and DasBlog 1.9 are definitely excellent candidates. II. RSS Readers First I would recommend two web-based RSS aggregator/reader. One is called Fwicki. I like its theme and styles very much. It also supports Google Adsense. But you’d better use Firefox to open it. The second one is NewsGator Online. Not only it is an excellent web reader, but also it supports sychronization between web reader and FeedDemon (a Windows client RSS reader, the one I would also strongly recommend to you for subscribing RSS feeds.) and NewsGator Inbox (an Outlook addin) and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile. It can help me keep a same list of RSS subscriptions in different locations!!! Another NewsGator tool, Desktop Sync, is a system tray application that keeps your feeds, folders and read states synchronized between NewsGator Online and the Windows RSS Platform. This means that any application that uses the Windows RSS Platform will be automatically synchronized with your NewsGator Online account! Of course, since IE7 uses the Windows RSS Platform, this is a great way to roam the feeds you read in IE from one machine to another. Check out Nick’s post for information on where to download and where to give feedback on the tool. III. Feed Publisher FeedBurner is the world’s largest feed management provider. Its web-based services help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web. FeedBurner can do Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe. Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers whereever they are. Analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best. Make Moneyitize by participating in the FeedBurner Ad Network. Try it out here and subscribe my blog http://feeds.feedburner.com/rossconsulting :-) Hope this helps,Ross Posted: Monday, December 18, 2006 11:45 AM by Ross Shen Filed under: Web 2.0 [...]
Any feasible solution depends on its calculated compromises, Web2.0 brings these concepts together, but I would imagine architects will still need to evaluate the approach given the requirement in hand.
Ashok
[...] man ein Web 2.0 Startup gründet, sollte man diese 10 Definitionen von Web 2.0 und ihre Mängel checken, um sicher zu gehen, dass man ins Schema fällt. Und wer überhaupt erst auf der Suche nach [...]
[...] (tratto da twopointtouch.com) [...]
[...] we us? First of all check out this vodblog and see some ideas about Web 2.0 and then print and read through this post on the shortcomings of Web [...]
[...] (tratto da twopointtouch.com) [...]
[...] da twopointtouch.com) Questo articolo è stato pubblicato in data 13 Febbraio 2008 at 08:24, catalogato in [...]
[...] SOA (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa948857.aspx) e Web 2.0 (http://twopointouch.com/2006/08/17/10-definitions-of-web-20-and-their-shortcomings/). Foram referidos alguns exemplos de modelos de negócio usados com S+S: Subscription/License [...]
[...] SOA (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa948857.aspx) e Web 2.0 (http://twopointouch.com/2006/08/17/10-definitions-of-web-20-and-their-shortcomings/). Foram referidos alguns exemplos de modelos de negócio usados com S+S: Subscription/License [...]
[...] da twopointtouch.com) Tags: 2.0, web Posted on 24 Aprile 2008 by admin Comments: 0 Category: Web [...]
[...] article here. August 21, 2006 | In web20 [...]
I hear a lot of discussion around defining Web 2.0; I think simpler definition is better such as “user based collaboration and content generation”. There are a number of people who want a clear cut definition on exactly what Web 2.0 is and everything encompassed by Web 2.0. This is analogous to asking for a list of every animal that exist now or has ever exist before they are willing to talk about dogs or buffalo. Even today new species are being discovered. If I may barrow the famous words of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward, “I may not be able to fine it, but I know it when I see it.” Web 2.0 is still growing and evolving this is why it is still so hard to define.
The biggest issue facing Web 2.0 is not technology. Most of the technology used in Web 2.0 has been around for quite some time. It is the application of this technology which is special. Here is the analogy I use for those who say that there is nothing new in Web 2.0. Using this approach one could argue that there is no such thing as a democratic state. That before the 1700s there were people, states, and governments and democracy is just made of these three elements. Well, we know that it is not the elements but their application which is different.
Craig Tobias
Solutions Architect
Cisco Systems.
[...] 10 definitions of Web 2.0 [...]
[...] that in fact complicate our lives even further and that Web 2.0 is a waste of time – check out this post on the shortcomings of Web [...]
[...] 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings [...]