Interesting comment here by Tim O'Reilly re the real purpose of Web 2.0 (from his
post on the Goohoo deal - hat-tip
Antony Mayfield for the link):
The real source of my argument for this position,... is that Web 2.0, the internet operating system we're building, is much bigger than search. Search is an incredibly powerful subsystem of that OS, but it is just a subsystem.
And that link takes you on to this comment:
I believe that we're collectively working on an Internet Operating System, and that it will ultimately look more like Unix than it looks like Windows. That is, it will be an aggregate of best of breed tools produced by an army of independent actors, all playing by the same rules so that those tools work together to produce a whole greater than the sum of the parts.
IN other words, to say that "Web 2.0" is Social Media, or Search, or User Generated Content, or Open Source / Open Access, or Converged experience, or REST, or AJAX, or Long Tailed Freeconomics, or Mashups etc etc is going down individual rabbit holes. It is a systemic shift to build an open operating system / platform / ecosystem (call it what you will ) - ie a new systemic approach to utilise the opportunities of the Broadband Internet. Getting too hung up on one piece today is fruitless, as the whole system is undergoing that massive period of wild creation and experimentation
seen in all new technology waves.
We've always cleaved to the original thoughts of Web 2.0 (from the original piece) as a good definition - there were 7 overall (
see here), 3 of which 3 were imho tactical (ie how-to's such as lightweight programming etc) but 4 were strategic:
1. The Web As Platform
Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
The central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence.
3. Data is the Next Intel Inside
Every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database: Google's web crawl, Yahoo!'s directory (and web crawl), Amazon's database of products, eBay's database of products and sellers, MapQuest's map databases, Napster's distributed song database. As Hal Varian remarked in a personal conversation last year, "SQL is the new HTML."
6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device
One other feature of Web 2.0 that deserves mention is the fact that it's no longer limited to the PC platform. In his parting advice to Microsoft, long time Microsoft developer Dave Stutz pointed out that "Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come."
Over-hyped it may be, but Web 2.0 has been useful as a shorthand to describe this emerging ecosystem - if anyone out there had drawn up similar observations beforehand, like we had, and then tried to explain it, then you'll know how hard it was. It is a re-structuring of the value chain and supply chain, from content creation all the way through to the service on the end user device - and even the end-user device itself.
Thus there is bound to be "
creative destruction" at all point in the emerging "Web 2.0" value chain - what would be more surprising is if there was not. Like the legendary buggy-whip companies in the days of the automobile, some players will become redundant. Other pioneers will falter (General Motors was the combination of 5 previous entrepreneurial ventures), some will reinvent themselves time and again (think IBM).
However, history does - in my view - give us some time unassailable facts that we can apply to this as to all others.
1. Any system that loses sight of basic economics will fail
Its for this reason we think that FreeConomic based models will fail - all the funders in the world cannot put enough money into things that don't cover costs as they grow. It works for a while in the early days, but is not scalable. Bubbles are typical subsets of this - early investment in uneconomic businesses allows them to grow to unsustainable sizes, but when they prove unable to lift off the runway, the whole thing collapses.
2. Stopping overconcentration of power in a small number of bodies is good for speeding up innovation in the early days.....
Historically, Darwinian evolution has always produced better things faster than large, controlled structures. Anti-Trust was put in for a reason in earlier eras, as experienced showed that network effects concentrate power very quickly, and that is a bad thing.
3. ....with the exception of basic common infrastructure
DARPA, GSM, PSTN drove standards to give confidence for large investment in "Common" infrastructure - ie systems where the benefit of all connecting was huge, but the initial cost was far greater than any one party could invest. Even where big money is poured into Walled Garden services, at some point the economics of infrastructure demands the become common. The Social Network is just the next example of this.
As we
noted yesterday, with Social Media - a part of the Web 2.0 Ecosystem - we are now starting to see signs of a shakeout that marks the end of the beginning. I would argue that Search is a little way further along, and that we will see similar in other areas such as UGC Video transport (see the Net Neutrality debates
starting to bite now) in the next year or so.
Update - in his own inimitable style,
Fake Steve Jobs makes similar points about the turning of the cycle.
