Taking residence in virtual worlds | Australian IT: “Rather than be tied up with the web 2.0, which he believes has a specific look and collaborative function, Robertson is more concerned with web-enabling technology and providing access. ‘Web 2.0 normally implies two things. It’s based on online democracy and collaboration, and uses AJAX-style technology to give a heavy graphical user interface client feel, even though you’re still in a lightweight browser. ‘That’s the implication, but we’re doing things like data sovereignty and workplace democracy and taking that type of approach, which isn’t classical web 2.0 but still trying to meet the same objectives.’”

By allowing Google to track my web browsing, Google becomes a more effective knowledge management platform.

Jeff Jarvis sets out the case for people who contribute to a platform being rewarded for their contribution, possibly beyond just being able to conduct a free search. He says,

The thing that’s new about this new world is that we don’t just consume. In fact, the act of consumption is now an act of creation. There are so many examples. When I search on Google, I am finding stuff for me but when I click, I am adding to the wisdom of the crowd that makes Google more effective for every searcher who follows me.

While I’m not convinced that we should be sharing in Google’s ad revenue that they might pick up when I do a search and click on a paid link, Jarvis goes on to make the point that our individual actions create collective value.

When I consume content and want to save it on Del.icio.us or other such services, that’s an individual act. But the tags we create together yield amazing wisdom of the crowd that can be useful in helping people discover content, in organizing the web around topics again, in improving search results, and even in improving ad performance.

I contend that, power-users of sites such as Google, Flickr and YouTube aside, most people’s payoff from participation on a platform is better search, a chance at accidental fame, and faster access to information. At least that’s the payoff I’m happy with, but then again I may be too easily satisfied.

There are many who argue about the definition of web 2.0, but it was Tim O’reilly who claims to have come up with the terminology – and it’s stuck. More than just a simple definition, which would do the concept injustice, O’Reilly sets out a meme map that provides a visual clue of the complexity of the ways people and businesses are collaborating on the net.

There are several key components to what O’Reilly claims are the core of web 2.0. I’ll set these out as follows:

1. The web as the platform. The days of packaged software is over – move what you do onto the web.
2. Data.
   

   The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces.

3. Harness collective intelligence. Sharing through wikis, blogs, and tagging makes us better and smarter both individually and collectively.
4. End of software release cycles. The constant beta and learning from customer behaviour. Software is being constantly updated and improves with greater usage.
5. Simple, light programming. Think RSS, loose coupled, and co-operating.
6. Software above and beyond the device. Get your product onto any device – a computer, mobile phone, i-pod, fridge, skateboard – you name it.
7. Create a rich user experience. Back in the day we had Word as a “rich” experience, but on a desktop. Now we can have the same experience on the web with Google Docs

Are You Ready for Web 2.0?: “Web 2.0, according to conference sponsor Tim O’Reilly, is an ‘architecture of participation’ — a constellation made up of links between web applications that rival desktop applications, the blog publishing revolution and self-service advertising. This architecture is based on social software where users generate content, rather than simply consume it, and on open programming interfaces that let developers add to a web service or get at data. It is an arena where the web rather than the desktop is the dominant platform, and organization appears spontaneously through the actions of the group, for example, in the creation of folksonomies created through tagging.”

The article went on to explain how there are many web 2.0 skeptics and show-cased some of the new software companies producing platforms providing new ways of mixing and compiling information so as to be more useful to users.

This blog (the one you’re reading now) only scored 13/66 using the Web 2.0 Validator.

How does your site stack up?

Not 2.0?: “More immediately, Web 2.0 is the era when people have come to realize that it’s not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web. Web 1.0 was the era when people could think that Netscape (a software company) was the contender for the computer industry crown; Web 2.0 is the era when people are recognizing that leadership in the computer industry has passed from traditional software companies to a new kind of internet service company. The net has replaced the PC as the platform that matters, just as the PC replaced the mainframe and minicomputer.”

“The net has replaced the PC as the platform that matters” for me is the crucial piece of this story. O’Reilly here points to the societal shift that is leading to a demand for these new Internet based services. I wonder, would web 2.0 a meme if we still had dial-up? I doubt it.

Sharecropping the long tail: Nicholas Carr

Carr argues here that the aggregation of trivial items from individuals is creating massive value for businesses such as MySpace and Facebook (combined the two sites account for 17% of all page views in November 2006) and suggests the explosion of web content has been brought about through a drop in the cost of producing and consuming the content. He suggests that, consistent with the long-tail theory, it is value rather than content that is being concentrated.

A couple of quotes from Carr:

“…putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very few.”

“It’s a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial.It’s only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale – on a web scale – that the business becomes lucrative. To put it a different way, the sharecroppers operate happily in an attention economy while their overseers operate happily in a cash economy.”

What Carr appears not to mention is the fact that YouTube, a user generated content site, does not make claim to the ownership of content. Instead, YouTube displays the content on the basis of a license. I argue that part of the value equation for sites such as YouTube is the way the site brings producers and consumers of video into proximity to one another in a common space. Shopping malls have been doing this for years and much of the value in a shopping mall is that shops bring shoppers and shoppers bring shops. There’s no need for the shopping mall to own anything other than the means by which the two are brought together.

Time’s person of the year: you : Lev Grossman

In 2006, Time magazine awarded “you” the Person of the Year award. They did this in recognition of the new reality of web 2.0 and the manner in which people around the world were sharing all manner of information for free.

“The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.

We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom.”