Web 2.0 in the UK

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Call it social networking or social media - just not Web 2.0! But whatever label eventually ends up sticking to the move to make Internet activity a lot more user-directed, the message from the grass roots of the UK developer community is clear: we haven't had this much fun for ages.

"It's nice to see some real specifics coming through about this movement instead of just chat about general trends," says Glenn Jones, Creative Director of software development firm Madgex (www.madgex.com), one of the organisers and main sponsors of d.construct, a conference for people active in building and extending social networking sites. Brighton recently hosted the second annual d.construct, whose theme this year was the central importance of APIs (application programming interfaces) in such applications.

A range of speakers from companies as diverse as Amazon, Yahoo and a number of independent designers and consultants spoke on issues ranging from Amazon's Web Services efforts to 'folksonomy' (how users are creating their own taxonomies out there) to the challenge of designing accessible Web 2.0 apps. Listening intently - but also tapping away quietly on many a laptop - were some 350 attendees, way up from 2005's inaugural 100, another sign of vitality say the organisers, who claimed they sold out on the first day of tickets becoming available.

One of the things delegates were playing with on their keyboards was a Web 2.0 application developed for the conference itself by the folks at Madgex: Backnetwork, an online social networking tool for

conferences (http://www.glennjones.net/Post/818/dconstructmakesyou35morefriendly.htm). "Clearly the whole ethos of the conference was to help generate more user-based content so we put together a platform to gather some of the back-channel chatter. The site was soon full of postings, comments, photographs, all examples of how relationships started being built at d.construct," says Jones.

Speakers at the event kept citing stats underlying how quickly social networking is growing. "We now have 180,000 developers registered to use Amazon Web Services," noted Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist for the company. "Social networking is out on the real Web now, it's not just for the alpha nerds any more," adds Simon Wilson of Yahoo! UK. Along with co-presenter Paul Hammond Wilson outlined how the firm offers internal APIs to encourage staff to play creatively with mash ups which get shown off on a special Hack Day (and taken up further by the company if showing real potential.

A more fundamental issue was then raised by Jeremy Keith, Technical Director at Clearleft - the REST ((Representational State Transfer) versus SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) debate. This translates to whether the next generation of Web Services would be better served by using R technology or the older SOAP; it's a debate that hasn't been concluded yet but the vibe at d.construct was clearly in favour of REST, it seems. There was also a defence of Ajax versus Flex in Aral Balkan's very lively presentation, 'Mash My Flex Up' (well, why not).

There was also plenty of fun stuff along with the heavy-duty API technology discussions - sites that show the possibilities of what a more user-driven Web might be like. Check out the world's first 'artificial artifical intelligence' site, for instance, at www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome (the idea being a real person instead of a computer helps perform a simple task for you); or www.thesheepmarket.com, a site that, er, has 10,000 amateur drawings of sheep (it made sense at the time). Also check out the mash ups around online photo site Flickr, such as the 'Flickr toys' page at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr.

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