Nobody knows what Web 2.0 really is
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Business, Enterprise, Web browser, Futures, Google, Internet on
Well, Tim O’Reilly has an idea, because he came up with the term. And the new O’Reilly Web 2.0 consulting practice ought to know. In fact one of the reasons the company set up the consultancy arm is to get everyone to agree on a definition, because we can’t have a good conversation about the benefits Web 2.0 can bring business if we mean something different.
Some people think of Web 2.0 as just about social networks or about sharing user-generated content. By other definitions, anything built with Ajax is Web 2.0, but that would make Outlook Web Access the first ever Web 2.0 service. Is it just having a blog? That doesn’t make Dell a Web 2.0 success. O’Reilly’s original definition was coined before Facebook or YouTube and before blogs were popular and it doesn’t depend on a particular programming language or style. He wanted to explain why Amazon was so successful, why eBay dominated online auctions, how Google was beating everyone else at search. His answer was that they were mining what users thought about the books they were buying, the people they were buying from and the Web pages they linked to and turning that into information for other users.
Web 2.0 is a combination of collective intelligence and network effect, taking user-generated content and metadata and using it to add value, creating applications that get better the more people use them. “Every true Web 2.0 company,” says O’Reilly, “is building a database that grows better with the number of participants.”
Social networks and blogs and interactivity on the Web site are all part of that, but the heart of it is much more structured data. So far, the big Web 2.0 success stories have mostly been companies that started online. If Web 2.0 is really that significant it should help companies who’ve been around for decades as well; how does a blog help if you make shoes or run a phone company? Mostly by letting you turning your customers into unpaid consultants.
The O’Reilly consultants have a fund of amusing mistakes by companies that didn’t get the point, from AT&T saying they wanted to reach out to unhappy customers who were ready to move to another provider - but didn’t want to create a community just to listen to people complaining - to a large consulting firm that was horrified at the idea of letting customers talk to each other.
There was the watch company that cancelled plans to send out images of a new watch to key bloggers because they didn’t want to spoil the effect of their million-dollar launch party and had to watch a grainy picture from a cameraphone go round the blogs instead - making the watch look cheap and nasty. One large retailer declares confidently that ‘none of our employees use Facebook’; that means they’re not in the ‘I hate working here” group trying to find out what’s wrong with the company. Another retailer is spending $2 million on research about shoppers that it won’t see for 13 months, when it will be completely out of date.
A blog won’t fix a company that makes bad products or has terrible customer service; but having a way to hear what customers are saying and respond to it can - if the company is actually able to change. “Going Web 2.0″ for the sake of looking up to date is pointless; using technology to build a relationship with customers is valuable.
Is any of that the same as Web 2.0 for online services? Not really. And the O’Reilly folks actually admit that. When they talk to a company, they use the term ’social Web’ because Web 2.0 is ‘distracting’.
-Mary
Rated: 100% (3 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Usha Shah - April 27, 2008 on 1:49 am
For some time I have been wondering what this phrase ‘web 2 ‘ is. Now I understand it. Alos inever realised the power of web 2 for online companies.
I am an amateur user of computer and internet.
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