Web 2.doh!, part three

Part three of my review. Some issues with the naming and then a couple of my favorites. Since this is part three, there are obviously parts one and two as well as a one piece version (the comments are only opened on the one piece).

Web x.0

What’s going on right now is about open standards, open source, free culture, small pieces loosely joined, innovation on the edges and all of the good things that WE FORGOT when we got greedy during the last bubble. These good Internet principles are easily corrupted when you bring back “the money”… I think blogging, web services, content syndication, AJAX, open source, wikis, and all of the cool new things that are going on shouldn’t be clumped together into something that sounds like a Microsoft product name. On the other hand, I don’t have a better solution. Web 2.0 is probably a pretty good name for a conference and probably an easy way to explain why we’re so excited to someone who doesn’t really care.

Joi Ito, Web x.0

A more thought out opinion with a very interesting angle in “Glocalization”

When the web started, the hype was that geography would no longer matter. Of course, we know that now to be utterly false. But the digital architecture did alter the network structure of society, allowing interest-driven bonds to complement geographically-manifested ones. Web1.0 created the infrastructure for glocalized networks.

Glocalized structures and networks are the backbone of Web2.0. Rather than conceptualizing the world in geographical terms, it is now necessary to use a networked model, to understand the interrelations between people and culture, to think about localizing in terms of social structures not in terms of location. This is bloody tricky because the networks do not have clear boundaries or clusters; the complexity of society just went up an order of magnitude.

Web2.0 is about glocalization, it is about making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible. Technology and experience are both critical factors in this process, but they themselves are not Web2.0. Web2.0 is a structural shift in information flow. It is not simply about global->local or 1->many; it is about a constantly shifting, multi-directional complex flow of information with the information evolving as it flows. It is about new network structures that emerge out of global and local structures.

Apophenia, Why Web2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization

Part two of “Glocalization”

There is no doubt that things are uber hyped up right now. And that folks are a bit wary of hype. But why do ravers roll even when they know about the Tuesday blues? Because the high is worth it. Folks are brimming with creative thoughts, engaged with glitter in their eyes and really really wanting to innovate. Hype does that, even if it has a cost.

I think that the biggest loose canon is the business model of all of this. Are we really comfortable relying on advertising still? How long will that last? Is there an economic innovation this round?

Apophenia , Why Web2.0 Matters, Round Two

Another exellent article. A good way to wrap up everything

I think the most interesting aspects of Web 2.0 are new tools that explore the continuum between the personal and the social, and tools that are endowed with a certain flexibility and modularity which enables collaborative remixability — a transformative process in which the information and media we’ve organized and shared can be recombined and built on to create new forms, concepts, ideas, mashups and services.

There is a tension between business and community, and Web 2.0 is pulling hard towards inverting traditional power structures downwards. Companies create the code and the frameworks, but more and more, users are creating the content, the culture, the true value of the systems they inhabit. Wise companies will realize they must be extremely proactive about sharing power and control with their users, because real people investing real time and energy have real emotions, and when angered by perceived loss of control will quite simply take their time and energy elsewhere, leaving empty, valueless code and frameworks

The culture of hackability and DIY is part of this inversion of control. We’re moving away from the days of “one size fits all” and monolithic tools developed to try and please everyone, into an era of user-centric, user-configurable tools — because the tools we’re now using have an architecture of flexibility that allows hyper-customization at the individual level.

Groups are tired of inefficient and cumbersome methods of porting data and collaborating on documents, applications, services, projects. Open standards enable a far more seamless experience of data portability, and companies across all electronic domains would do well to move away from walled gardens and closed formats with all due haste, because they won’t survive the transition to the intertwingled world of Web 2.0.

Barb Dybwab, Approaching a definition of Web 2.0