Web 2.0: The Seminal, The Machine, The Missing

Browsing my blog subscriptions, then searching the blogosphere via Technorati, I came across three interesting recent posts related to Web 2.0.

Characteristics of a Seminal Web 2.0 Service

On A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC, there is a January 30 post titled "The Seminal Web 2.0 Service". The post calls Flickr the seminal Web 2.0 service.

The author says he has "learned more about how to create a great web service from using Flickr than any other service. By a long shot." That's right: it's using Flickr that has done the teaching, not investigating its code or its business model. Using it.

Which is one more indication that Web 2.0 is indeed about users. Here are 10 things the author has learned from using Flickr:

• 1) Making online content default to public instead of private creates community
• 2) Every web service needs to have a profile for every user
• 3) Users should be encouraged to comment on other user's posts
• 4) Tagging content is better than foldering content and the tags should be public
• 5) Users should be encouraged to tag their content when it is posted to the service
• 6) Widgets should be used to make content available off of the service
• 7) Content on the service should be "bloggable" with one click
• 8) Engagement metrics like comments, favorites, views, can and should be used to drive discovery (the most interesting algorithm)
• 9) Geotagging is great but we've yet to see a great interface for geotagging
• 10) Machine tagging (autotagging) is the next big thing in web 2.0

The Machine is Us/ing Us

On Technorati's Top Searches page this afternoon, "Web 2.0" is in the Number 7 spot, and the YouTube video "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" has snagged the top spot in the "Popular Videos" category.

"Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" is a video created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, in response to the "Web 2.0" video posted on YouTuby by jutecht.

"Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" is the first "outcome" of the Digital Ethnography working group Prof. Wesch has just launched at Kansas State University. The purpose of the working group is "to examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction."

The video is a 4+ minute history of communication, starting with paper and pencil, proceeding through the early text-based Internet, onto HTML, the problem of format intertwined with content, XML, continuing with the broadening of the Web through indexing and search, the subsequent development of the Web into a social mechanism, but a mechanism that also is "us", ending with a list of things that must/will change.

"Delightful, engaging, thought-provoking, entertaining!" -- Two thumbs up!

Here's CoryTheRaven's very interesting response to Professor Wesch's video: "Re: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us"

Ah, But What's Missing?

Meanwhile, earlier today on O'Reilly Radar, Tim O'Reilly posted "Social Network Fatigue and the Missing Web 2.0 Address Book". The post quotes a post made by Jon Udell titled "Critical mass and social network fatigue".

One of the questions the combined posts ask is: are we today (with respect to island social networks) where email was in 1991 (when it was primarily a means of communicating between users on a single local area network)? In ~1991, at Byte Magazine, Jon's friend Ben Smith said:

“One of these days, everyone’s going to look up from their little islands of LAN email and see this giant mothership hovering overhead called the Internet.”

Tim takes the discussion further than what we currently think of as Web social networks, saying:

What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?

Local area networks (LANs) were subsumed into the Internet. But that only became possible through the creation of the Internet address book, the IP address catalog that was initially managed and maintained by a single company (Network Solutions), and the infrastructure created by companies like Cisco that made linking the domains seamless from the user's standpoint.

Conclusion

Excellent reads and views! Enjoy!

-- Kevin Farnham
O'Reilly Media