Web 2.0: RIP ?

[Andrew Jeavons]

http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9929415-60.html?part=rss&subj=...

So according to this article the hottest MR "trend" could be over ?

[Ray Poynter]

Seems to me that Coop is using a fairly non-typical definition of Web 2.0 in order to be able to dis it - something we Brits (like Andrew) refer to as a "straw man". The key elements of 2.0 (IMHO) are: interactive websites (as first enabled by things like AJAX), the ability of people to network (peer-to-peer more than hierachical), and the ability for people to create user generated content and collaborate.

Note, the last facitilty, the user generated bit, has tended to me a minority activiy, certainly when applied to blogs and citizen journalism. But when applied to Facebook status, uploading and tagging photos, has been a much bigger phenomenon.

My final obersvation on the 2.0 RIP is that the US is one of the least 2.0 places in the world. Look at the data for places like China and you will see much, much higher rates of usage for user generated site - and there are more Chinese Internet users than there are in the US.

Of course, the commercial significance of the term 2.0 could diminish, but that signifies little, (again IMHO).

[Andrew Jeavons]

Well I think the first thing to accept is that the whole "Web 2.0" epithet is *so over* as my teenage daughters would say. I confess I never liked it - it obviously implies there is a 3.0 to a N.0...

And talking of RIP - Facebook is not exactly a rising concept, it's time in the web evolution is passing. China may well be a rising web user, but I have always though parsing out one aspect of the webs' evolution and reifying it was a cynical activity. The late Phillip Kleinman (of www.mrnews.com) commented to me once while we sat through an interminable ESOMAR paper that he regarded the MR concept of brands as something invented by the MR industry so they could sell brand research...a bit harsh perhaps, but I think Web 2.0 comes under that umbrella. It was just a part in the epigenetic landscape of the web.

[Simon Kendrick]

"We're now in a phase where bigger hardware and software companies with deep pockets are starting to predominate"

Isn't that good for MR?!?

[Tom Ewing]

Exactly - it seems to me that what's being predicted is an end to the web 2.0 startup bubble and a second dotcom crash, rather than people rejecting the activities that web 2.0 enables (which is where the MR hype would start looking foolish).

If anything, history suggests a crash situation can be fertile ground for new, cheap web start-ups: Blogger launched during the last dotcom bust, after all, as did Wikipedia - two of the planks on which 2.0 was built!

I dislike the 2.0 name personally, as it tends to overstate the 'newness' of certain types of interactive online behaviour. But it's stuck and as such we have to live with it!

[Stephen Cribbett]

Those amongst us that are keen to banish web2.0 - call it the participatory web - are missing the real action that's taking place, namely the appropriation of web2.0, social media technology and digital user behaviours for business benefit. I refer to how private online communities are supporting qualitative and quantitative research and how open innovation is evolving into something BIG. Forrester have just published a great little report titled 'Will Web2.0 Transform Market Research', the answer appearing to be an unabated YES. You can get it here

My own business Dub harness web2.0's new behaviours and a range of social media tools to allow clients and agencies to tap into minds at speed, with greater reach and in a more cost effective way than traditional methods. My vote is web2.0 is very much alive, as is research2.0. The problem is in the labeling...

[Andrew Jeavons]

Ah well there is the problem. The reification of Web 2.0 as something different from the on going evolution of the web. Of course as the web develops new ways to use it will develop. USENET begat the Internet, which became the Web which....Time Berners-Lee said here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7371660.stm that he thinks the web is still is in its' infancy, and I agree very much with this view. Every time the infant makes a new sound doesn't mean we need a new label. I'd rather we concentrate on the applications of the evolving web than labels, which in the end wear out and become an encumbrance. I have no desire to banish anything, but I'm sick of hearing about "Web 2.0" !

[Tom Ewing]

"Every time the infant makes a new sound, doesn't mean we need a new label"

This is very true, but we do have labels for infants' developmental stages, and "baby" and "toddler" have useful connotative meanings even when the boundaries blur! Having cut my interactive teeth on USENET in the 90s I'd be the first to agree that most of the 'new' activities touted by 2.0 are nothing of the sort, but the scale is different, and the attitudes are different, and the behaviours enabled are different. So a label, even a dumb one, doesn't seem inherently unreasonable.

(It's interesting to me, though, how some of the new web apps getting buzz - things like Twitter, Tumblr, Muxtape - seem much more based on building unique communities, cultures and brands via restrictions: what kind of net culture happens with a 144-character limit, or when you go back to comment-free blogging, etc? The real danger of "Web 2.0" would be if we assume that we have nothing to learn from "Web 1.0", or that the former represents an unarguable advantage over earlier technologies of interaction.)

[Andrew Jeavons]

Well I'd agree there - but Web 2.0 has been used too much as a marketing tool I think. I want to see some more. I think your comments on Twitter are very astute - this is something I have watched for a while. So I think looking at community development on the web is where we have to go....