Archives

In 2007, we’ll be seeing how Web 2.0 matures from a trendy buzzword into the realm of web standards. With the 2.0 technology and interaction, the idea of ‘community’ won’t be limited to a few oddball sites but will rather become an integral part of many mainstream sites.

You can already see this happening with the array of social bookmarking and media sharing links. What began as an oddity of icons encountered on the rare blog or two, is now becoming a standard one-click sharing device on such venerable sites as the New York Times. It’s a global community out there!

So with the maturing of Web 2.0 a given, the obvious question is what’s next? If I knew, trust me I’d be buying stock in the next killer app right now. But indications seem to be pointing towards a connection of data in a more intelligent manner, making it more relevant to the user.

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of data out there that in theory is searchable but not always connectable without spending a lot of time pouring over the results. And who has time for that. So we usually end up taking the first few results and running with that, but it doesn’t always work out.

So, what if we had a system that could rank and weigh people’s comments (which are fast becoming a standard feature thanks to Web 2.0) and, by cognitive deduction, find just the right result for that user. That is, our system would mine the data in the Web to detect relationships between the information that’s out there. Once established, it would be easier to extract and aggregate information tailored to fit the user.

Pie in the sky? Well the folks at the University of Washington don’t think so. Check out what they’re doing with their KnowItAll and Opine systems. Play around with their demos and think of how this would change your interaction with, say, a travel site if the system could provide a useful and meaningful result by distinguishing between concepts such "great" and "almost great".

"The system will know that spotless is better than clean," said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Washington who is a leader of the project. ‘"There is the growing realization that text on the Web is a tremendous resource."

And so in the next few years, we just might see this definition:

Web 3.0 – a web of connected data; i.e., moving from a web of connected documents/sites to a web of connected data.

In a typical month I get more questions about Web 2.0 than about Ajax. The Ajax questions cover a broad range of topics, the Web 2.0 questions are mostly “what the heck is Web 2.0?” I don’t really have a good answer, but these frequent questions have caused me to ponder why Tim O’Reilly’s definition seems so flabby. Here then is one of my infrequent meditations on Web 2.0.

It is well over a year since Tim O’Reilly laid out his ideas on Web 2.0. At the time he wrote his seminal article, “Web 2.0″ had already been in common parlance for a year and a half “with more than 9.5 million citations in Google.” Since that time, Web 2.0 has become synonymous with Ajax, social bookmarking, user generated content and other buzzwords of the day. It is my guess, however, that Tim didn’t intend his 7 characteristics of Web 2.0 to be taken ala cart, or “like a fruit salad.” But I do think that as the concepts of Web 2.0 have been proven out in the real world, some of his 7 characteristics — especially the process ones — are turning out to be best practices for any sort of web application.

And Then There Were Five

So which of the characteristics should we peel from Web 2.0? My first nominee is #4, “End of the Software Release Cycle.” Also termed “the perpetual beta,” it is the idea that systems will undergo constant change and that users should be treated as co-developers. Further, companies must have the operational chops to support this constant change. There is nothing wrong with #4 in principle, but there are a number of reasons why it isn’t really a part of Web 2.0:

1. Let’s be honest, we’re talking about short release cycles, not no release cycles.
2. Early adopter will accept and even embrace quickly changing software. For the great mass of consumers and established businesses that depend on your service, rapid changes can be problematic.
3. Web based businesses have gone through cycles of innovation and consolidation since the early 90′s. Small, nimble companies (including Yahoo!) pushed features into their Web sites and applications in short release cycles. Once these companies became larger, innovation took a back seat to stabilization and growth. Release cycles became longer and, as happens with so many large organizations, many of them stopped taking risks. But since innovations in browsers and other technologies change the terrain of the web so frequently, and the cost of distribution has remained so low (the price of a good colo remains quite reasonable, unless the sluggish behemoths that are against net neutrality get their way), the cycle of innovation and consolidation has remained consistently short. We’ll rediscover the end of the software release cycle each time when Web 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 all roll around.
4. Small, nimble startups are usually better able to push new functionality in short releases. In fact, it is often an unfortunate side effect of a lack of process. Big companies have to work hard on shortening their cycles. As such it is a triumph of governance and process rather than technology. Claiming this fundamental competitive advantage for Web 2.0 is overreaching. It is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for Web 2.0.

Characteristic #7, “Rich User Experience” is also a candidate for eviction. The concept here is that using Ajax you can deliver GUI style applications. The implication for Web 2.0 is that rich user experience will enable all sorts of apps not seen before:

We expect to see many new web applications over the next few years, both truly novel applications, and rich web reimplementations of PC applications. Every platform change to date has also created opportunities for a leadership change in the dominant applications of the previous platform.

While we are seeing new applications, such as Google’s collaborative spreadsheet, we are seeing many more retoolings of traditional shopping cart and other Web 1.0 applications. Just like #4, #7 will not distinguish Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 apps — i.e. it is not a necessary nor sufficient condition for Web 2.0.

Why bother trimming away at Web 2.0? I think there is some merit to the Web 2.0 meme, but making its characteristics so broad obscures its true nature. I think other concepts — the wisdom of crowds, the long tail, and software above the level of a single device — are necessary and sufficient conditions for Web 2.0.

The Wisdom of Crowds, the Free rider Problem, and the Paradox of Choice

Of all of the Web 2.0 concepts, I think the Wisdom of Crowds is the most import. In my opinion, all of the other principles are in service of enabling user generated content and more generally the “noodle of the mob”, err, the wisdom of the crowd. But while it is the most important principle, it is also the most fragile; online communities have been around since before 1979 (Usenet, Compuserve, etc.). They all seem to have a lifecycle, however — they rise and fall in a predictable arc.

That something so fragile and perishable should be at the heart of Web 2.0 is worrisome. I’m not sure that anyone has the answers as to why all online communities wither away, but I have a few ideas.

1. In knowledge management, there is the concept of tacit knowledge capture, i.e. a community does something together (a project, for example) and the artifacts that they produce — discussions, documents, FAQ’s — are valuable knowledge. When you try to gather knowledge without “doing something,” you have to insert more and more management — librarians — to make things work. Communities where users simply share testimonials about how great a product works is going to wither sooner than most or maybe never live at all.
2. When the incentives of all the participants are aligned, communities work well. When they are not, such as when commercial interests intrude, the community degenerates. This is how USENET eventually succumbed to a flood of spam. These are bad actors, as opposed to the free riders below.
3. At their best, online communities are like communism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But why did communism fail? Because of the free rider problem. Free riders are actors who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production. The free rider problem is the question of how to prevent free riding from taking place, or at least limit its negative effects. Unfortunately, it seems that online communities suffer from a massive free rider problem, with lurkers, occasional contributors and frequent contributors having about a 90-9-1 ratio.
4. Communities don’t die because they are fads, like pet rocks. See this analysis of the Friendster collapse to see why it was more about #2 above.

The wisdom of crowds is the methane that fuels the torch of Web 2.0. As such it is important to solve some of the issues that plague the effectiveness and longevity of online communities.

Anyhow, that’s it for my meditation on Web 2.0. Sorry I wasn’t able to come up with a pithy Malcolm-Gladwellism to summarize my thoughts.

Technorati : ajax, web20

As you know, I don’t really like to be a blog echo chamber. One post spawns hundreds of “check this out” links, but I suppose that’s how I get some of my traffic, so maybe I shouldn’t be such a fuddy duddy. But I’ll still try to keep it to just those posts I think are worthwhile.

OK, so Web 2.0 is one of those frothy subjects — even frothier than Ajax — that spawns all sorts of overhyped, frothy posts and articles. Dion Hinchcliffe is a thoughtful and frequent exception to this rule. He’s been posting on the subject on his Web 2.0 blog for over a year now and his latest post, The Habits of Highly Effective Web 2.0 Sites is particularly interesting.

Dion points out seven (is this coincidence?) characteristics of an effective Web 2.0 site:

1. Ease of Use
2. Open up your data
3. Aggressively add feedback loops to everything
4. Continuous release cycles
5. Make your users part of your software
6. Turn your applications into platforms
7. Don’t create social communities just to have them

I think the first — ease of use — is clearly a winner. That is where Ajax can and does play a part. The fifth characteristic is at the heart of Web 2.0, the creation of social networks. More needs to be said on this point, especially when it comes to the Free Rider Problem. If you haven’t read much about Communism and the reasons for it’s demise, don’t worry. If you’ve experienced the problem of spam on social bookmarking sites — individuals who get a “free ride” on the work of others by selfishly posting links of dubious quality — then you know what I mean.

A number of studies have been done on the free rider problem and it’s relationship to the size of social networks. All of this research can be used to devise some technical solutions to social bookmarking spam. More on this later.

Technorati : ajax, web20

Preloadr is another Ajax image editor, but beyond being featureful and slick, it also integrates into the Flickr ecosystem via their API.

I have to say that this is my favorite so far. It has layers, advaced filters and operations. It’s a whole lot closer to photoshop than any of the other ones out there.

 
  Technorati : ajax, flickr, image editor

Everyone has a Web 2.0 rant and I guess it’s time for mine. Over at BloggingStocks, Tom Taulli in an article entitled eBay: The Web2.0 Killing Fields observes that ebay is seeing the liquidation of lots of Web 2.0 startups. He makes a valid point that Web 2.0, much like many of the dotcom startups, don’t have a business reason for being:

But there’s a problem: while these sites are definitely cool, the business model is often hazy. After all, when you give something away, you need either a premium product to upsell or a lot of users to monetize things with advertising.

How does this square with Tim O’Reilly’s principles for Web 2.0? So far the only principles adopted by the Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites is “wisdom of crowds” (aka, let the users create the content for you) and “rich interaction” (aka, Ajax) to make their apps/site as usable and cool as possible, and counting on network effect to drive value for their users. Meanwhile all of the Web 2.0 “web is the platform” startups are either being acquired or driven out of business by Google. This far into the Web 2.0 hype cycle, from a business model perspective, the offerings out there are still very much of a yawn.

The social bookmarking sites, especially, are an inch deep when it comes to that user created content. Flickr and the user created Korean news site, Oh My News (english language site) are the exceptions here, with original content being contributed by its users.

We’ve all read the various models being bandied about, from micropayents, to advertising to selling offline copies of the agreggate. This may be the best one yet, through:

OK, so you buy a domain and web service hosting for one year ($200?). Then you quickly throw a webpage together that renders some XML as HTML. Put it on eBay and pocket $4,000? Repeat weekly and you are making $200,000 per year.

Fortunately for all of us Ajax developers, Web 2.0 isn’t the only thing driving Ajax adoption.

Technorati : ajax, business model, web2.0

I used to get frustrated by Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature as it often was sluggish or simply did not work. I’m happy to notice they have innovated a new “Amazon Online Reader” that provides a much better experience, thanks no doubt to some Web 2.0 technologies and a user interface that has been improved in many small ways.

I could detail the virtues of the new experience, but it would be quicker and more meaningful for you to just give it a try. Simply go to Amazon and look up a book of interest and click the "Search Inside" graphic and you will be taken into the reader.

Via Micro Persuasion, Earthlink has launched an RSS reader and a social bookmarking app. Steve correctly points out that both Earthlink and AOL cannot be left behind when their users are leaking to other sites. Still, is a me too strategy sufficient in the fast moving world of Web 2.0? Has Google changed the name of the game from "distribution and content" to "applications, baby!"?

As part of an effort to ride the Web 2.0 wave, the folks at Yahoo have created a library of rich User Interface components using javascript, and has made them available free of charge here.
The components are built to incorporate techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML AJAX, and RSS.
The library consists of 2 sets of ‘widgets’ if you will; Utilities, which are used to simplify development, and Controls, which are visual objects that enhance interactivity. They have also built a set of CSS style sheets that define cross browser compatible layout and font techniques.

Some of the components look promising, and I look forward to using them in upcoming projects.

Let’s face it, cross site AJAX is a real pain. If you’re going to provide your components as a service, sort of like Google maps, you’re task is not impossible yet still challenging. If you want to mash up your app with other services at the browser level, you’ve got to proxy those services. Put any way, it’s a pain. How to simplify creating truly powerful, cross-site AJAX apps?

Greasemonkey showed the way, demonstrating how you could manipulate pages with Javascript. Book Burro was one of the first AJAX/Greasemonkey hybrids that allowed you to search for a book at your favorite online book merchant, then click on a semi-transparent drop down menu and see book prices at competing retailers. The magic of AJAX! Book Burro has since made the transition from Greasemonkey script to Firefox extension in its own right.

Another example of this curious Firefox Extension/AJAX hybrid caught my eye the other day: MyStickies. This extension will allow you to insert AJAX-DIV stickies onto any web page. The extension handles this insertion and also includes a Javascript library via a Javascript file from mystickies.com and another via chrome://mystickies/ for the behavior.

The sticky location is persisted to the mystickies site where you can also use a webapp to search, manage, etc., your stickies. It’s a direct manipulation bookmark that doesn’t reside just on your local computer.

Now I happen to think mystickies is pretty cool, especially if they implement some of the features on their roadmaps, like sticky sharing (how web2.0!). But what interests me here is the application architecture. Firefox Extension plus AJAX = a service that can be applied across other web sites. There is clearly a limit to this opportunity — you have to really like a service and truly, how many of us are willing to keep 20 extensions running, each of which hogs a piece of browser toolbar realestate? Many of these players are already planning IE, Safari and Opera ports.

What shall we call this thing? Browser Extensions and AJAX? BEJAX?

I’ve been promoting the idea of the collaborative spreadsheet as the killer app for AJAX for a while now. First there was WikiCalc, then Google spreadsheet. The folks over at the Dojo Foundation — yes, the Dojo Toolkit folks — have been working on a Wiki app that fits into this category as well. From their about page:

The goal of the project is to create an open source software product. The product we’re making is a wiki engine, but where most wiki engines are geared toward pages of text, OpenRecord is geared toward loosely-structured database content.

It’s still in an early development stage, but you can take a peek at some prototypes here. Click around to the various pages and try adding and editing cells and rows.

Speaking from experience, these types of applications will need professional support if they are to make a dent in the corporate world. Look for the document and knowledge management folks (OpenText, EMC/Documentum, etc.) to start introducing these "Office Lite" functions in their products.