Month: July 2011

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0, or so we are told, underlies the recent proliferation of online social media. Is it a technology, a business model, a cultural shift, or maybe a bit of all three? Here’s a quick look at all three facets, along with a few arguments that suggest ways in which Web 2.0 is more alike to what came before than some of its champions might like us to believe. Revolutionary, or evolutionary? You be the judge.

A technology

Have you ever heard the slogan, Web 2.0 = Ajax? There is a grain of truth to it: Ajax is an enabling technology, without which Web 2.0 as we know it wouldn’t be possible. Ajax (Active JavaScript and XML) allows JavaScript code running in the user’s web browser to exchange small amounts of data asynchronously with the server, letting the browser perform transactions without having to reload the entire page. You don’t need a technology like Ajax to have interactivity in a Web site, but it simply would not have been possible to deploy complex applications like Google Docs over the web without Ajax or something like it.

Déjà vu: Web 2.0 is not really a fundamentally new Internet architecture. Web traffic still relies on the HTTP protocol, and HTML markup (or XHTML or XML) remains the basic structure for encoding web pages. JavaScript and Adobe Flash also predate the emergence of Web 2.0. Even Ajax just provides an additional layer of complexity running on top of existing Internet protocols.

A business model

A cynic might say that the business model of Web 2.0 is all about getting your customers to create your content for you. A true believer would say it is a new way of doing business where customers interact with businesses and each other to create value in ways that would not have been possible before.

Déjà vu: Haven’t we been here before? Many of the same symptoms that preceded by the dot.com crash in 2000 are now visible in the Web 2.0 world: unquestioning acceptance of hype, too many vendors crowding into a limited and unstable market, and companies are exploding from startup to mutli-billion dollar market valuations in a matter of months to years — often without ever recording a single quarter’s profit. There’s even a term for it now: Bubble 2.0.

A cultural paradigm

Social networking is so closely intertwined with Web 2.0 that we sometimes see people using the two terms synonymously. Even on web sites whose primary purpose is not social, the prevalence of Web 2.0 enabling technology allows site owners to tack on social media components at a modest marginal cost. Communities of users grow up around these sites, often bringing people together who would never have had the opportunity to meet or interact in person.

Déjà vu: Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, has responded to Web 2.0 boosters by saying that the Web was never designed as a one-way communication medium. Interactivity, participation, and collaboration have been implicit in the design of the Web since its inception: “If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.” (quoted in Anderson, 2007). Where it is different is that new tools for web application design do seem to be lowering the barriers to participation (consider the wider uptake of Facebook and Twitter compared to traditional blogging or the publication of personal web sites). This may perhaps be the most lasting accomplishment of Web 2.0.

Anderson, N. (2007). Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: “nobody even knows what it means” Ars Technica (Online periodical). http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/09/7650.ars

Dvorak, J. (2007). Bubble 2.0 coming soon. PC Magazine. Republished online at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2164136,00.aspx

Foley, S. (2011). Bubble 2.0: will the new dotcom boom go bust? The Independent. Online edition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/bubble-20-will-the-new-dotcom-boom-go-bust-2216115.html

Casey, M. E., and L. C. Savastinuk (2007) Library 2.0, A Guide to Participatory Service. Medford, N.J.: Information Today.

LIBR559M

About me and welcome

I am a student in LIBR559M, “Socia Media for Information Professionals,” and this is my blog.

To plagiarize my Twitter profile, I am “by day, a technical communications specialist in Ottawa for Ericsson Canada, and by night a second-year MLIS student at UBC.” On paper — or perhaps I should say in a computer file — I must look something like the very model of a postmodern iSchool student: extensive background in XML, structured authoring, electronic document distribution, and all of that. But secretly I’m the kind of person that library schools try to screen out at all costs: you know, the one who wants to become a librarian because they like books and don’t like people (and did I mention the cats? I have three of them). I am overstating the case a little for dramatic effect, because I’m not really a misanthrope, but you get the general idea: I’m not exactly the person you’d vote most likely to be your library’s standard-bearer for Web 2.0. (For an interesting emprical study on the personality types of librarians that are (and are not) likely to get involved in Library 2.0, see: Aharony, N. (2009). Web 2.0 use by librarians. Library & Information Science Research, 31(1), 29-37.)

But enough about me — let’s move on to the term “hyperconnected” and why it’s in the title of my blog. Because I work in the telecommunications industry, I’m being reminded that the Internet is reaching a turning point in that soon there will be more devices connected to the Internet than users. In the next decade, the biggest contributor to the growth of the Internet will be the addition of assorted smart devices, many of which would be machines we would not normally think as being network entities (refrigerators, bread machines, fire hydrants, and the like). In the hyper-connected network, the user isn’t just an atomic point in the network, but a small cloud of interconnected devices, linked by Ethernet and Bluetooth and technologies that haven’t even been designed yet. Layered on top of this trend, the proliferation of social media and interactive networked applications continues. Each user is potentially connected, not only to more people, but to the same people through an increasing number media. How will all of these changes affect the professional life and work environment of the librarian, archivist, or curator — and will they really make as much difference as the futurists say they will? This course promises to offer some fieldwork in the digital ecosystem. So this week are getting our nets, specimen jars, and tranquilizer darts ready. Next week, we start looking for answers.