Web 2.0: Separating Fact From Fiction

We hear a lot of talk about Web 2.0 (read “web two point oh”) these days. In the news, in the business press and on the world Wide Web itself. It seems everybody and his brother has a “Web 2.0 compatible” this or a “Web 2.0 capable” that, or can “...help get you working with the latest “web 2.0 aps!”

Like I said, we hear a lot about Web 2.0 these days. Unfortunately, much of what we hear is confusing, conflicting or downright “counterfactual”.

So, let's see if we can't add a little clarity to the discussion.

To start, Web 2.0 is not any single product, company or technological advance. There is no “web 2.0” database”, no “web 2.0” software nor even a “web 2.0 technical specification” to which developers must adhere. Like the terms “green”, “low fat” and “natural”, “web 2.0 is used and abused by anyone who chooses to use it.

Web 2.0 is simply a name used to distinguish one period in the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web from other periods. In a broad sense, “Web 2.0” is an “age” in the same way that “The Middle Ages” and “The Protestant Reformation” are two ages distinct from other periods in history.

The Web 2.0 "age" is currently seen as the period of time during which Internet based information systems moved from delivery systems for "static" information to hosting systems for more fully active and interactive information and communication. 

Although the term has a definite date of birth, the period of time that the term “Web 2.0” describes is much less distinct, with some debate over exactly when (and even IF) the Web 2.0 age started. And on the timeline of all recorded human history, “The Web 2.0 Age” is not much more than a single point in time. 

There are some (most notably Tim Berners Lee, the man widely recognized as the architect of the World Wide Web, though, who believe that the use of the term is premature at best and completely inappropriate at worst. These people point to the interactive Internet we now enjoy as having always been the intent and goal of the initial developers of the Internet and the World Wide Web. 


Many of these folks feel the term "Web 2.0" is little more than marketing hype intended to make it easier for software and system developers to re-package and re-brand tired old products as "the next big thing".

Regardless of which point of view you take, the fact is that the term has entered the lexicon and appears to be here to stay.

Welcome to the "Brave New World**"

____________________________

If you need help sorting fact from fiction in your web 2.0 operations, leave a comment here or e-mail me at: TomFawls@Council4SmallBiz.com.

(** the term "brave new world" is from  Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I and was used as the title of an Aldous Huxley book published in 1932)

Copyright 2010 Tom Fawls. All rights reserved.