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Web 2.0 Re-examined: Part 1 – The Confusion

2006 December 7
tags:
by Coach Wei

Web 2.0 Re-examined: the Paradigm Shift, Technology Stack and Business Value

Web 2.0: the State of Confusion

Web 2.0 is exciting, but there are lots of confusions today, even among noted experts.

There are two schools of opinions among experts. The first school is critical of Web 2.0. This group is represented by Tim Berners-Lee and Russell Raw. Their opinions are:

  1. There is nothing fundamentally different between “Web 1.0” and the so-called “Web 2.0”;
  2. Web 2.0 has nothing new and is based on the same technology as of Web 1.0;
  3. Web 2.0 is just a piece of jargon.

The second group of experts are Web 2.0 champions. This group is represented by Tim O’Reilly, Paul Graham and Dion HinchCliffe. This group argues:

  1. Web 2.0 is here and it is big;
  2. “Architecture of Participation”, “the Network Effect (social network)”, and “Harnessing the collective intelligence” are fundamentally new and different from web 1.0;
  3. Web 2.0 is more about a paradigm shift in how people use the web, less about new technology.
  4. “Web 2.0” is not based on a technology shift, but rather a usage paradigm shift.

Despite the confusion, the term “Web 2.0” is getting widely known, accepted and adopted since Tim O’Reilly’s original essay on Web 2.0 published in September 2005. However, these confusions must be addressed.The followings are three key questions that need to be clarified:

  1. What is Web 2.0? Is it just a consumer phenomenon?
  2. Is there any new technology that differentiates web 2.0 from web 1.0?
  3. Given that the most web 2.0 examples such as MySpace, Flickr and Google do not relate to enterprises well, what is the real, tangible and measurable business value of web 2.0 from an enterprise perspective?

It is time to re-examine Web 2.0.

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