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Reading Ted Rheingold's Web Journal, I was excited. Just yesterday I'd come to the conclusion that Web 1.0 was all about technology, Web 2.0 was all about human behavior when I read
today I heard Ross Mayfield succinctly say Web 2.0 is made of people while Scott Rafer explains the phenom as the Participation Generation. I love those two because they acknowledges that participation of the tool users is just as significant as the tool makers who sincerely made the tools for just those users.
It's a much better way to think about the change (and we all sense the change, even if we don't all necessarily think it's worth versioning) than focusing on Ajax and webaps.
Looking at "What is Web 2.0"
They present this list
Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication
Most of these fit the conceptional model well... ofoto is to managing photos as flickr is to sharing and publishing photos
mp3 is to finding and acquiring music as Napster (was) to sharing and exchanging music
CMS's are to managing content as wikis are for collaborative writing spaces.
Taxonomies are for managing content via metadata as tagsonomies are for sharing and opining on content via metadata.
In each case we go from a patriarchal management system to a collective or personal sharing/cocreation model. Some don't quite fit, but it's interesting to see how many do.
If you haven't picked up a copy of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat", his sequel to the Lexus and the Olive Tree, I highly recommend it. I got a copy at the supermarket; the book (which has a lot of stuff in it that we already know) represents to me what anyone must now know and must take into account about the convergence(s) that will unlock the world's markets and people to each other as individuals.
Even though I got a free copy, I can't bring myself to read a book from a guy who's view of th 3rd world is informed by what he sees out the window of a limo on the way from the airport to the conference center and back. Bah. And he totally dodged my hard question after a reading.
And what this has to do with Web 2.0, I know not.
The more I see this word preached, the happier I am.
Just for the sake of synchronicity, I'll reference a recent post of my own.
Tools are great, but it's funny how the stuff we were so excited about a year ago now seems so trivial, like sloughed skin. The central concept of the 'net as an engine of conversation and participation, however, never loses its relevance.
Why is the management system patriarchal? And does patriarchy run counter to sharing/cocreation?