Erik Sundelöf

I read an article on the Swedish business news site N24 on the web 2.0 and what that really is. I decided I needed to clear up a few concepts and wrote a Swedish blog on the subject at http://www.sundelof.net.

Web 2.0 is probably one of the most discussed topics in the valley today. Everyone has their opinion on it. Personally I think it is way to over hyped and more feels like a marketing gimmick. Looking back on what the father of the web’s Tim Berners-Lee intentions with the web it all becomes clear. Web 2.0 is nothing else than going back to the original idea of the web. Less broadcasting and is more about creating connections. Moreover I rather talk about the social web instead of the web 2.0 and the characteristics of the social web is that it is

• Connected
• Stupid yet smart technology
• Inexpensive
• Human
• Immediate
• Ubiquitous

Now that is not that difficult. Right?

During the first stumbling steps I think the web was exactly this, but as time progressed the market forces changed the game and we lost focus on the true intention and vision of what the web should be. We talk more about business models than about true needs of people. I wrote an entry recently about this as a celebration for the 15th anniversary of the web – In the Wake of the Birth of Web.

Going back to the source. I will start with a few quotes from Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Tim Berners-Lee writes in the second paragraph of his book ”Weaving the web” where he explains how the web got created: ”The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially connected to anything. It is a vision that provides us with new freedom, and allows us to grow faster than we ever could when we were fettered by the hierarchical classification systems into which we bound ourselves. It leaves the entirety of our previous ways of working as just one tool among many. And it brings the workings society closer to the workings of our minds.”

He continues one paragraph afterwards: ”The irony is that in all its guises – commerce, research and surfing – the Web is already so much a part of our lives that familiarity has clouded our perception of the Web itself. To understand the Web in the broadest and deepest sense, to fully partake the vision that I and my colleagues share, one must understand how the Web came to be.”

Finally I will quote him on a topic very much relevant on what is so intensively discussed in the IT sector. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and user friendly design, but also has some relevancy for interaction with people with disabilities.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

No question he knows what he is speaking about. After all he was the architect behind the Web. he built upon the great work by brilliant people such as Vincent Cerf, who solve the technical architectural problem as signal protocols. The latter is now the lead internet evangelist at Google.

The first part of the first quote brings up what is normally referred to as web 2.0 or as I prefer to call it the social web. Obviously the first intention was exactly the one as so many now claim is the new web 2.0. We are just trying to correct our mistakes that is. Maybe this is one of the examples that the market forces not always are for the greater good for the conceptual development. They need to be there but we need to be careful not to get carried away by the first revenue model. What do we want to accomplish down the line? Long term visions should be as important the so often short term market forces.

What is the web 2.0? Tim O’Reilly presented a definition at the conference Web 2.0 in 2004 and it is described here – What is the web 2.0?. Bear in mind that the definition has slightly shifted over time so some of the content is “out-of-date”.

The discussion involves all big players such as for instance Clay Shirky at NYU (http://shirky.com) and Dan Gillmor. Dan is normally considered as the father of citizen media and is now the director for the grassroot journalism initiative at Harvard University called the Center for Citizen media (http://citmedia.org). he also wrote the famous book ”We The Media”. Clay Shirky opened up the field of social software and raised the awareness of at least some developers that social software is very different from just software.

The shift from normal software mostly focused on interaction with one user and very seldom several. Interaction between users was a truly new concept and thee were many mistakes made there. I usually recommend to all who wants to work in the field of social software to read the excellent piece by Clay Shirky – The Group is Its Own Worst Enemy – as it further emphasizes the need of structure, if yet only slight, inside the software.

More people inside the tech sphere start to realize that in order to build social software (and working inside open-source projects) you need to understand that the word ‘social’ is there for a reason. Yet I have in too many times, still do see and come across solutions that are not even close to being able to be called ‘social software’ even though they are marketed as such. They simply forgot that the social part must be there…

The second part of the quote is something that is very interesting and is intensively discussed in especially the valley. How can you make money out of this social web? Some say you cannot earn money out of social media directly but you can earn it from products derived from them. I think the truth is in between but probably more towards the latter. At least if you are looking for a sustainable business model.

Nicholas Carr, editor pa Harvard Review Letters, the man behind the blog http://roughtype.com, wrote the provoking book ”Does IT matter?” where he more or less smashes the trust put in the value of IT for any business. Many people regard him as too negative and completely wrong, but it is hard to claim that there is absolutely no value in what he says. The value of traditional IT inside the business is probably overall overrated as for now. The value of social media inside business however is still something that can provide a competitive advantage for new businesses. This is where many of the players in the valley are located. You may want to call it ‘value innovation’ if you want, but it still ‘just’ seeking a new market.

Back to the web 2.0 discussion and the existing solutions. Carr should be considered as slightly provoking and is to be considered as one of the most skeptical person towards for instance Wikipedia. Web 2.0 and as he puts it ”it’s flagship Wikipedia” is discussed in one of his more famous blog entries – The Amorality of Web 2.0. This is one of the most valid entries in the debate I have read so far and especially take note on the comments where people such as Dan Gilmor, Dave Winer and Ross Mayfield all contribute to the discussion. Carr continues the discussion in two other blog posts on the recent structural changes of Wikipedia. They can be found at The Death of Wikipedia and Now, let’s bury the myth.

Bloggers such Carr (here used as some kind of Devils advocate) keep the discussion sane and hopefully they wil help preventing the business from becoming as overhyped as in the last ‘kaboom’ bubble. Considering what I saw attending the TechCrunch party in August I wonder if we are not creating a new bubble. Fortunately it seems as the whole business is not in side the bubble, which is kind of relaxing. What we can learn from the discussion in his entries and other blogs is very simple and as I put in my blog entry In the Wake of the Birth of Web: “…that successful and sustainable technology solutions all fulfill true needs of real people.”

Where does all this fit in to the society? Just look at Thomas L Friedmans in many ways ”rich of words” book ”The world is flat”. There is a incredible faith out there in outsourcing, software solutions, webbased solutions and the IT sector as a whole, including everything from call centers, video stores to software developers and CRM systems. The flatness of the world is something that is purely new to the world society and thus we are facing new challenges. We havent got used to them and therefore new issues arises. One of the more recent issues we have started to face is the legal owner structure of the web and its implications on the web. Again Carr wrote an article on this matter and it is found here – The Web is unflat. Internationally the issue was discussed at the World Summit in Tunis earlier this year.

Recently I indicated partly where I see the social web heading in the future and then more focused on the interaction with traditional media organizations. The blog entries were written in the wake of the discussions and interviews with CNN and BBC:

• The Future of the New Improved Media
• Comments on the Future of Citizen Media
• Credibility and copyrights in the New Improved Media

Obviously there is no shortage of unanswered questions, but I do not see them at all as new. maybe some of the solutions wil be slightly new. I am not sure. I more see this as an attempt to go back to the original intention with the web. Back to the basics so to say. Keep it simple stupid. and so forth Maybe it helps to label this as the creation of web 2.0. I don’t know. What I do know is that the whole concept of web 2.0 is very much overhyped.

What I do know is that the new social web is a step in the right direction. We just need to keep our focus and not become blindfolded by the need of revenue steams. We should be as creative there as elsewhere. There must be an alternative to online advertising. At least I hope so. I am getting tired of them. :)

Update: Bruno Giussani at http://giussani.typepad.com/loip/ pointed out an important error in the facts. Vint Cerf was one of the people developed the protocols enabling the web to be born. I apologize for the mistake. He also points out:
“Your point about going back to the origin of the web is right. (“connections”, by the way, not only among people but also among data). Just look at the many things that are happening now (blogs, skype, mashups, youtube), they were all ideas of the mid-1990s already, that could not be implemented because bandwidth, compression algorithms, and some other tech pieces were not there.”