What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a catch phrase for the next wave of software that’s all about revolutionary new user experiences that allow users to break the boundaries of traditional, siloed systems and services by integrating them into their lives.  Web 2.0 is about seamless service composition and just-in-time assembly of user experiences.  It’s about putting all the infrastructure built in Web 1.0 to work for the user, on their terms, so they can really take advantage of it.  It’s about integrating the online world into “everyday life.”

A few months ago, I was talking with my friend about how blogs are a lot like notesfiles.  I was a big user of notes, which we had ported from PLATO to SunOS 4.1.3, and then later to Solaris.  Notes was an very basic form of usenet (or netnews).  It was limited because the synchronization and syndication features were limited (all we had was the notes to email gateway).  With usenet, you could post on your local server, and your post would be replicated around the world for people to read.  With notes, your post was stored locally, or on a file server.  To read it you had to have access to the notes file, by accessing a timeshare system via a terminal or terminal emulator.

Notesfiles and blogs are similar.  People post, and you can read their posts, and comment on them.  They have similar social affordances.  They’re an open space to share ideas.  They had cultures, rules, social groups, cliques.  The same is true of blogs and the net in general.  Sure, you can put pictures on blogs, and change the font.  But it’s all about what you post.  Syndication shows that.  Notesfiles even had sequencing tools that allowed users to read all of the new posts at once, much like RSS readers do oday.

Basically everyone I knew seqed and posted to notesfiles.  It was integrated into our work – when we needed to coordinate our activities around a big systems upgrade, or make a quick decision, we checked the notesfile first.   When we wanted to know what people were up to, read funny jokes, talk politics, etc., there was a notesfile for that.  Some of us also knew each other in real life.  But after about 10PM, we interacted on notesfiles.  We were in high school and they made us go to bed.

So why is blogging not like usenet or like notes?  Scale, and ease of use.

There are > 30 million blogs.  We only had 200 notesfiles.  There were about 1000 notesfile readers on our system, and today there are at least as many blog readers as there are blogs.  This of course makes notesfiles safe, familiar, and more controlled.  Like a suburb, or village in the emerging digital landscape.

But why was there such a big jump in use?  Because you don’t have to know how to use a complicated text editor like vi, or even a terminal emulator.  You can blog from your web browser.  Don’t worry, you don’t even have to remember your password.  And now there are tools that make it easy to blog directly from your PC, even when you’re offline.  So don’t worry about a net connection either.

You see, scale and ease of use become a virtuous cycle that lead to huge adoption and growth.  The scale drives innovation in ease of use because value can be placed on increased use. Users integrate these tools into their lives. This is what’s happening with Web 2.0.

Users demand that their services be integrated, not siloed and separated.  The blogging tool should be part of your PC, not some separate application, certainly not through a terminal.  Why is it that email and blogging aren’t integrated?  (You used to be able to use gnus to read both usenet and mail from the same folder hierarchy.)  Services should come together to provide seamless user experiences that leverage information from everywhere.   Users should be free to focus on their goals instead of instrumental tasks, like "posting" or "searching."

We are at the beginning of the end of the idea that we have applications that support instrumental tasks, and moving to a world in which our computing environments adapt to support our goals and activities -- integrating with "everyday life."

To me, that's Web 2.0, and that's what we're trying to do with Watson.  Except instead of doing it on the Web, we're doing it on your desktop, and it's based on what you're doing.  To me, most of the Web 2.0 services miss the boat -- they continue to view themselves as a "destination" instead of embracing the idea that they exist to deliver service to the user, on the user's terms.  Our job is not to create another activity silo.  Instead it's to create experiences that enrich and integrate into everyday life, into what you are doing, so that we can make you better and better at what you do.

-j

Comments

[Natalia Brennan]

One's first step in wisdom is to kuesteon everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.