Talk:Web 2.0/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Removed "implementation" section

Boris Mann: I removed the "implementation" section pointing to companies -- let's not have this page be a commercial advertisement, but rather an evolving definition of Web 2.0. Link to a longer article on your own site if you want to talk about your opinions. I also removed WebDAV -- that's a particular technology choice, but is only one among many.

Vague article

This seems to be a vague article promoting a bunch of the author's favorite technologies and psuedo-tech-blabber. It certainly doesn't match how I've seen the term used. And some of the writing is just absurd -- XML-RPC is a specific format, it cannot be RESTian. If you want to remove the totallydisputed tag you're going to need some cites to back this stuff up.AaronSw 21:12, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I also think the following sentence is nonsense: "The concept is different from Web 1.0, as it is a move away from websites, email, using search engines and surfing from one website to the next." I don't want to remove it because the article _does_ need a comparison to "web 1.0," whatever that may be. However, as far as I know these Web 2.0 technologies are still, well, websites. And they still use, you know, search engines and links to other websites.

Differing views

I contributed additional content to this very important document (unfortunately I forgot to login before making this round of edits). I would advice that differing views on Web 2.0 should be expressed by editing and contributing to the content. Basically, participate in the debate or conversation (constructively) and we will end up with an article with a high knowledge quotient. Simply placing Wiki tags template tags doesn't help such a cause. It costs next to no time to place a tag in an article and significant amount of time to express ones alternative view via content contribution. Wikis are about open conversation and debate (expressed through the contribution of knowledge), simply saying "I disagres everyone!" doesn't really fit into this scheme. Let's encourgage mass participation in this evolutionary process. Nothing is defnitive as all human beings are beasts of bias (our context and individual experiences are inextricably linked), open conversation and debate is how we dilute bias. --Kingsley Idehen 12:16, 25 Mar 2005

Cleanup

I'm not qualified to really resolve the debate over the definition, but I am pretty knowledgeable about the Wikipedia, so I changed things to conform better to Wikipedia standards. The text still needs a lot of cleanup to eliminate its present jargon-heavy, promotional tone. A more inclusive approach to the definition would be a vast improvement, i.e. more of a "web 2.0 is like this" than "web 2.0 is this". Future editors should try to think more in terms of explaining Web 2.0 rather than defining Web 2.0. Finally, I added it to the WWW category -- it seemed to call for a more explicit subcategory but there may not be a good one yet. It's something for the time being, at least. --Dhartung | Talk 07:55, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • OK, I just waded in and made some major changes. The text in this article is, frankly, some of the most terrible, impenetrable marketing gobbledygook I've seen outside of spam pages. There's no way that an average person looking at this article could make any sense out of it. Many claims are simply too POV for a neutral Wikipedia entry; this entry does not exist to sell Web 2.0 to people and should make clear when arguable claims are being made. I'm going to continue working through the article. I don't mind it being expanded or corrected, but whoever works on it would really do well to keep readability in mind. We have plenty of space to explain concepts; we don't need $50 words to make points. --Dhartung | Talk 21:47, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Clean up..WARD!

PLEASE: As an analyst, I need to see a page constructed in this manner. It may not be technically correct or it may miss detail..but I do like that it shoots for some level technical communication, if not sophistication. And I am somewhat baffled by the concern over promotion or commercialism: Its a volatile area and the leaders (ie, standard technologies and leading ventures) will define the direction and degree of change. I need to see that.

IDEA: As a solution for someone who needs a page less caffeinated, can we split the page, a second page..provide a kind of layman's page? I don't think that it is wise to dumb it down. Natually, the first viewers/users of new product and technology are not neophytes.

I would like to see the page as complete, detailed and as sophisticated as it can be.

A New Paradigm (yeah, right)

This "article" is a joke. Not up to Wikipedia standards. - Just my 2c PowerMacX 30 June 2005 06:37 (UTC)

I can see where it still needs major improvement, but I'd like to hear what changes you think are needed. I've put my money on the table by thoroughly rewriting almost the entire article in something closer to plain English. One problem is that there isn't a clear-cut agreement on a definition. The other is that it barely rises above listing technologies and hinting at how they work together. I've done what I can to eliminate POV problems, too. --Dhartung | Talk 1 July 2005 03:12 (UTC)
I think this is the key to the problem: there is no concrete definition! Shouldn't this entry at least address the nebulous nature of the topic ? Especially as the term 'Web 2.0' will almost certainly mean something totally different in six months time -- veghead 13:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Without descending too far into a technical critique of the term and the ideas of its proponents, one can still express some significant misgivings about the value to wikipedia of such an article:

  • The term 'Web 2.0' predates the attribution given in the article. It was first used as the title of a cover story for Wired Magazine in early 1997, if I recall correctly.
  • Very little effort is made to explain software versioning, and why its taxonomy is a useful way of expressing the concept behind 'Web 2.0'.
  • There's little more than a hand-waving effort to explain what the fundamental differences are between established web applications and services and the new ones cited in the article. Furthermore, no attempt is made to identify or reconcile the fairly obvious contention that these are not actually revolutionary changes, but instead incremental improvements on technologies and development strategies that have existed since the Web was first popularised. Surely this is essential information, without which readers would be hard pressed to comprehend what's being presented.
  • Most importantly, no attempt has been made to express the currency of the phrase e.g. Is it widely used? Is it being promoted by a few? If the latter, who is promoting it? If the former, provide some useful examples to help readers contextualise the term.

Fundamentally, I agree that this article falls far short of wikipedia standards, and should either be significantly re-worked or... something. 8^) I'm not sure about wikipedia's process for dealing with significantly low-quality content, aside from appealing to the public for it to be improved, but this article in its current form casts little light and in fact provides false information with regards to at least one fact. --Gcrumb 01:58, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

These are good criticisms of the article, although I'm not sure why you go so far as to say it "doesn't meet Wikipedia standards" -- whatever those are. I could link to a few that are much, much worse, for example. At this point the article has taken collaborative input from a number of editors, which is proof at some level that there is interest. To your objections:
  • The term "Web 2.0" per se is a fairly obvious wordplay. The Wired article you have in mind is almost certainly Hollywood 2.0, actually. (You know, I have all those in a box somewhere. Good times.) In any case, the idea being expressed by O'Reilly's choice of the term is the subject of this article, not the term itself.
  • An explanation of why it's a programming pun would be helpful, I agree.
  • Fundamental differences do exist, and I agree the article doesn't address these well. That's definitely an area for improvement. Revolutionary change is a claim that is frequently attributed to proponents of Web 2.0 (and we've seen it before with, say, Java), but almost every discussion I've seen simply sees this as a coalescing and maturity of various complementary technologies. I don't think revolutionary change per se is a requirement before having an article, but you're absolutely right that this could be explained better and would make more sense to readers if it did.
  • Currency of the phrase does extend beyond the O'Reilly people who were, after all, putting a brand name on a conference. It's fair to say that its usage is contentious, not just for that reason, but for the ones you've given as well. I completely agree that context -- in the form of technology industry articles, for example -- would be an excellent addition to the article.
Gcrumb, thank you for your comments, I for one take them constructively. I have put a lot of effort into improving this article, and I don't doubt that it could use more. (What Wikipedia article is ever finished?) As for Wikipedia's "process", well, stepping in and improving it yourself is the first resort, and adding a comment or question to a Talk page, as you have done, comes right after that. Beyond that you may want to peruse the guide to improving articles, especially the section I've linked to. I think this article is well beyond mere clean-up and, since it has active contributors, the Talk page is the best place to handle the problems you're bringing to our attention.
If I can suggest a metaphor, this conversation is a very Web 2.0 type of interaction. You say the message isn't getting through, and we're listening. ;-) To me, that's the whole essence of Web 2.0, whether or not you like the jargon or not! --Dhartung | Talk 05:10, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

A Definition

Web 2.0 is a web of executable endpoints and well formed content. The executable endpoints and well formed content are accessible via URIs. Put differently, Web 2.0 is a web defined by URIs for invoking Web Services and/or consuming or syndicating well formed content.

Hopefully, someone with more time on their hands will expand on this ( I am kinda busy).

BTW - Web 2.0 being a platform doesn't distinguish it in anyway from Web 1.0. They are both platforms, the difference comes down to platform focus and mode of experience.

Kingsley Idehen 16:50, 13 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I would say that Web 2.0 is a buzzword that has been created during a time when many new internet technologies have been introduced. The new popular technologies (podcasting, blogs, ajax, rss, etc) got a lot of people excited and there seemed to be a "new wave" of web technologies which seems like it could change the primary ways people use the internet. Marketing people and tech journalists looked for a word to uniquely identify this new wave in internet trends, and came up with Web 2.0. However it's not like its a new web, its part of the continuing evolution of technology and many of these technologies in fact have been in development for awhile. Most likely the term Web 2.0 will just fade away and not have any staying power as a term. In essence, I think "Web 2.0" is an event in the general conscious of tech journalists... and not an actual object, as evidenced by the difficulty in defining it in terms of objects it covers. Journalists each have their own definitions for it they promote. By the way, reading those terms in the graphic on the article really reminded me of this video from timanderic.com (the guys who do Tom Goes to the Mayor on Adult Swim). - Corby 22:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thanks for pointing at that movie . excellent :) Kosmar 11:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag

http://stilicho.blogspot.com/2005/04/blank-corporate-verse.html http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002690.php

Please check the date and times of the earlier contributions to this article. If you are going to introduce links, at least provide a degree of chronology. Hopefully this will simplify juxtapostion of opinions and contribution for the lurking audience. It also provides context for Web 2.0 knowledge seekers in general.
BTW - it's nice to know why Web 2.0 is tagged npv. But what about making contributions that take it out of npv? If someone has the time to write a blog post expressing dispair and frustration, then why not channel that energy into providing clarity to matter that is clearly of vast importance? -- Kingsley Idehen 17:23, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)
Kingsley, I need to clarify. I did not POV-tag the article. The person who did that was JohnSmith777 (see his Talk and hasn't edited since). [NOTE: 13/8/05 This is Richard MacManus here - I just want to say that I am NOT JohnSmith777. Therefore I have edited out the reference to me that Dhartung made in the previous sentence.] I certainly have channeled my interest in providing clarity into the article, as the history indicates; I also had to express my frustration, and felt that did not belong on Wikipedia. I underline again that I have no problem with you personally, just incomprehensible writing. At this point I am perfectly happy to remove the tag if you agree; it does not seem to reflect specific claims of POV. --Dhartung | Talk 08:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
As there have been no further comments about the NPOV claims, I am removing the notice. Please bring any such issues here to Talk in future, with specific criticisms of the article. --Dhartung | Talk 07:02, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Richard, thank you for clarifying that. I apologize for suspecting it was you; I'm still mystified why that person disappeared after our exchange, which I didn't find testy at all. FYI, editing talk pages the way you did is usually a bad idea. Adding your reply would have been sufficient. --Dhartung | Talk 06:17, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, will add reply next time :-) That was my first Wikipedia edit, so I don't know the protocols yet. But I've been following the conversation closely and I've just now added my own user page. So perhaps I will start to contribute here. --RichardMacManus | Talk 21:17, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Eyeballing

I'm not sure what is meant by eyeballing here, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with my eyeball. Could someone correct the link? --Dantams 14:42, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I have removed the link. I have never heard of eyeballing, can someone verify that it is a term used in the industry? --Sleepyhead81 14:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I've only rarely heard it as a verb. It was popular during the dot-com boom, e.g. Pets.com advertised like crazy in order to attract "eyeballs" to its website. The meaning is closer to "hit" in a web-traffic sense rather than "user" since a single user can view the site multiple times. If you attract enough eyeballs, your sales -- or your banner-ad click-throughs -- rise. Most web professionals probably think of it as an unhelpful marketing term. --Dhartung | Talk 17:04, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Removed the link to 24SevenOffice

This link doesn't belong here and the link is irrelevant and unnotable. - Sleepnomore 15:20, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

I have a strong feeling this article will attract linkspam on a regular basis. --Dhartung | Talk 17:05, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't know how to "reply"... don't have a Wikipedia account, either... but I figured I'd point out that I added a link (my first edit) to Tim O'Reilly's write up on what Web 2.0 is. --Michael Chui, 9:43, 14 October 2005
  • Just to clarify: the 24SevenOffice link is relevant as it is a web 2.0 application. Whether it is notable enough to be included can be discussed though. --Sleepyhead81 17:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

The link to 24/7 is absurd. It is linkspam. If it is a Web 2.0 application, it is certainly not one of the most important web 2.0 examples. Can its proponent cite major published sources that give it legitimacy?

Absurd? 24SevenOffice utilize many features of "web 2.0" so to speak; ajax, rest, xml, web based. But I don't see it as a prime example of web 2.0 as delicous, Flickr etc. It is however an example of a the business side of web 2.0 as most other web 2.0 sites are aimed at the consumer market. --Sleepyhead 12:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

What does Google have against this page?

Why doesn't this page show up when you do a Google search for "Web 2.0"? Using a script, I looked at the first 780 or so results twice recently without getting a hit for any Wikipedia page, actually. I also tried searching for Wikipedia AND "Web 2.0", this page was not returned in the first 100 results. What's the explanation? Also, is there a reasonable search query that will return this page? EGalloway 00:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I didn't realize that. It's weird. Google will usually privilege pages with the search term in the title and/or URL, so we should be high regardless; and it does index pages that refer to this one, but the only versions I turn up are from Wikipedia mirrors. I can only imagine it fell victim to some sort of spam protection; hopefully the next google dance will fix things. --Dhartung | Talk 06:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Google definitely isn't indexing this page. If you do this search, you will get in response: "Sorry, no information is available for the URL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0". It's strange that (presumably) this has been happening for about a month or even longer. EGalloway 23:11, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

At least out of curiosity, I put in a request for someone to look into this. I wonder what they'll say ... --Dhartung | Talk 08:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I forgot to update. Google simply referred me back to their FAQ pages, alas. It's still missing from the index. Strange. --Dhartung | Talk 06:31, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It is now available through Google. That's how I found this page. runal 12/20/2005

Business Impact

Would anyone be up for rephrasing the Business Impact section? Maybe I'm stupid, or something, but I have no idea what is meant by 'The potential for exponential business growth as a result of the effects of Web 2.0 comes down to the difference between human-instigated value consumption and computer-instigated value consumption.'

How I wish Wikipedia could ping watchers of this page with an email (or even IM). Anyway, here is clarification of what I mean by human vs computer driven value proposition consumption.

Web 1.0 was about web sites geared towards an interaction with human beings as opposed to computers. In a sense this mirrors the difference between HTML and XML.

A simple example: you need to purchase a book; amazon.com provides value to you by enabling you to search and purchase the desired book online via the site http://www.amazon.com for instance. In the Web 1.0 era the process of searching for your desired book, and then eventually purchasing the book in question, required visible interaction with the site http://www.amazon.com. In today's Web 2.0 based Web the process of discovering a catalog of books, searching for your particular book of interest, and eventually purchasing the book, occurs via Web Services which amazon has chosen to expose via an executable end point (the point of presence for exposing its Web Services). Direct interaction via http://www.amazon.com is no longer required. A weblog can quite easily associate keywords, tags, and post categories with items in amazon.com's catalogs. In addition, weblogs can also act as entry points for consuming the amazon.com value proposition (making books available for purchase online), by enabling you to purchase a book directly from the weblog (assuming the blog owner is an amazon associate etc..). Now compare the impact of this kind of value discovery and consumption cycle that is driven by software to the same process driven by humans, and I am hope my use of the phrase "exponential growth" is somewhat clearer :-)
BTW - If you were to track the upward trend of amazon.com's financial performance and its adoption of Web Services (by this I mean exposing its service innards to SOAP invocation) you will find an interesting trend. --
Kingsley Idehen 22:33, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Let's try that again. "A simple example: you need to buy a book. Amazon lets you do that by visiting Amazon.com. But now they also offer Web service APIs to search for and buy books, so you don't need to visit the Web site at all. Also, Weblogs can link directly to particular books, in posts that are organized by categories and/or tags, with the owner possibly earning affiliate fees. I think Amazon's use of Web services has contributed to their improved financial performance."
I'm not a fantastic writer. But I think if you study the differences between what you wrote and what I wrote, you'll be more likely to write stuff that doesn't get rewritten. -- Mpt 02:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Removals

I have removed the following paragraph:

Others think that Web 2.0 will not be an incremental improvment, but much more. It will fix pop up blockers and spam filters and provide us more of a broadband users experience that the users want. In the future, there will be no difference between a desktop application and a web site. For example iTunes lets you browse the web for music albums - a hybrid application, redefining the word webapp, to mean hybrid of website and application.

This contains

  • vague statements ("provide us more of what we want", "broadband users experience")
  • crystal balling ("in the future, there will be...")
  • random example of iTunes, which further is claimed to "redefine" something

I also removed the list of applications "widely thought" to be examples of web 2.0 apps, per Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms (who's widely thinking?). If anyone wants to make a list of examples, attribute it to a good source (like the O'Reilly table). The list also contained some spam. Fredrik | talk 08:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the utility column from the comparison chart from O'Reilly. It wasn't in the article cited, and there were entries in it that didn't make sense. Specifically, what does stickiness have to do with interoperability? - Troublekit

Who's the idiot that keeps removing External links? I've added those back. Richard MacManus December 11, 2005 at 07:41:10 UTC

Quibble on definition of Web 1.0

The current text says "The original conception of the web (in this context, labeled Web 1.0) comprised static HTML pages that were updated rarely, if at all". Actually, Tim Berners-Lee's original conception was of a web of documents that were subject to continuous, collaborative authorship and refinement (something like WP, in fact). It is true that the original implementation of the Web comprised static HTML pages. But I'm just a drive-by editor; I make the suggestion for someone more invested in this article. David Brooks 16:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Introduction

I've done heavy work on the Introduction.

It's interesting - Web 2.0 is a hot phrase, and yet despite the heavy tendency of Wikipedia editors towards Slashdot-style subjects, we can't hammer out a decent article on it, despite the coverage on this particular page.

Frankly, I found the article as a whole nigh on unreadable, so I've left the rest of it alone.

--Vodex 14:13, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Pointless Buzzword

"Web 2.0" is a pointless buzzword that is vaguely defined. If it were a software product it would definitely be considered vaporware. I'm surprised there is even an article this large on it. The reason the concept is confusing is that it is a bunch of ridiculous tripe. 12.226.168.30 06:29, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I've seen 'Web 2.0' described as a new kind of 'dot.com-ery' (PCW magazine, I think - not sure how they spelt it). I take this to mean it's little more than a new bunch of people trying to con a load more venture capital out of a new bunch of other people. This view should certainly be reflected somewhere in the article, I believe, as it makes little sense to me without it. --Nigelj 09:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
It's interesting to read above that Wired was talking about 'Web 2.0' as long ago as 1997. In about 1998 I remember reading an interview feature in a UK periodical of the time called Internet magazine. A web designer was talking about versions 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the WWW already then, and the associated technologies and advances that each of these represented. It took me some time to realise that he was actually referring to release versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Those were the days when web designers wrote websites to match IE's specific features and bugs. I think a lot of the people in the web 'industry' are, by nature, marketeers and spin-meisters (not to say bull-sh**ers): They always want to give their customers, employers and financial backers the idea that they are leading us all into some next, new, cutting-edge (and expensive) thing. The web's the web. It's based on standards laid down by the W3C and these evolve and grow all the time. There never will be a Web 2.0 in any sense that it replaces and supercedes the current one. Keep that for your customer, your boss or other paymaster - and hope they don't realise you're just hyping normal growth and natural evolution (til after you've had all their money and spent it, that is). That's the other POV that this article needs to portray in order to become more long-sighted, balanced and encyclopedic, IMHO. --Nigelj 15:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
True, "Web 2.0" is marketing/PR talk. Internet is just internet, get over it. Saying a website is Web 2.0 and the other isn't because it's missing this and that function is missing is so lame. How can something be "Web 2.0" because it's social? My ... is Web 2.0 because it's bigger than yours.


At the moment I'm at the conclusion that 'Web 2.0' is a financial investment term - not an internet or technical one: As an investor it's 'your second opportunity to put money into WWW companies', after the failure of all the money you put in around 1999. It's not to do with web technologies, just investments; all the rest is hype aimed at those who don't really know a web service from a web site, XHTML from WSDL or a homepage from an API. --Nigelj 17:33, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Napster

I'm adding a blurb pointing out that Napster is the name of a defunct peer-to-peer network and now one of many licenced music rental schemes.

A better comparison would be "mp3.com" to "iTunes Music Store" (for the new meaning of Napster) or "mp3.com" to "Gnutella".

-- Joshua Rodd

Anti-commercial rant in one section?

Under the "Present-day web publishing" header is a list of reasons why people don't serve documents straight from their own computers. I think such a discussion is off-topic anyway, but I really take umbrage at this bit:

"Commercial pressure Having said all of this, many think that one of the reasons for a relatively low take up of home publishing to the web... has been commercial. In the last decade it has been to the benefit of the software industry, from Microsoft downwards, to convince ordinary users that they do not want to see even simple, standards-compliant scripts such as HTML in their raw form in a basic text editor, let alone have to type the simplest thing into a command line... The tasks are no simpler, merely presented graphically rather than textually and often then available only for some considerable charge rather than free and built in to almost every home machine. Unfortunately at the same time most computer education became centred around learning to use these commercial products rather than learning about the underlying technologies of the web, the internet and the machine..."

To me that sounds like an open source zealot who's grumpy that - shock! - users don't want to edit HTML and AJAX by hand, if indeed they have to edit anything at all.

I think that whole section should be carved right down and left as one or two sentences. Anyone else have any opinions?

El T 13:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree. It seems to be something of a rant, not to mention speculative (particularly the pure speculation of the last sentence). Is there any evidence whatsoever for the opinion that a lack of standards-compliance has an effect on home web publishing? And why do companies which sell web publishing software have a vested interest in having fewer home web servers? They sell their product regardless of where the site it created is hosted. The issues in this parargraph seem to me to be irrelevant. I vote for deleting it, but will wait to see if anyone else has any thoughts. Lurker 12:25, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Comparison section

I removed the comparison section (it was a link to an orielly story) because it seemed really flawed. I think this article needs to be shorter than it is now, and much more clear. My suggestion is for the article to focus on the usage of the term web2.0 and what it typically refers to. The sentence "However, a consensus upon its exact meaning has not yet been reached." is important, because it's very true. Even so, there are certain things people can easily classify as being "web2.0," and we should focus on those. Comparing, point-for-point, with other models of internet usage when we can't even properly define the term seems silly.

Civility and consensus

Can fellow editors please try to tone down the name-calling here? Recently we've had "Who's the idiot..." (Richard MacManus) and "grumpy...zealot" (El T) among others. We're trying to collaborate on a balanced, NPOV and informative encyclopedia article, not destroy some opposition's will to live ;-) Deleting the work of those you personally disagree with won't help either, they'll just revert it back in. We'll all have to discuss, help and cooperate in the long run, I'm afraid --Nigelj 11:48, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if people did not delete references to my work. Frankly it is idiotic and I don't mind calling a spade a spade. Richard MacManus

Richard, you're coming off as rude. I'm sure you're not up to anything nefarious, but please see this page to understand why some people might have doubts about those links. Also see No personal attacks and Talk page guidelines (quote: Don't write that user such and so is an idiot, or otherwise insult him/her (even if (s)he is an idiot). Instead, explain what they did wrong, why it is wrong, and how to fix it.). Anyway, I think your article (Web 2.0 for Designers) is a valuable resource and entirely appropriate, but I'm also undecided about your weblog since the goal of Wikipedia's external links sections is to be selective rather than comprehensive and I think this includes favoring articles over sites. Aapo Laitinen 23:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry for responding to this when the conversation's moved on, but I think it's totally reasonable to say something sounds like it's been written by a grumpy zealot when, by any objective standard, the work:
  • Is partisan;
  • Is abusive towards Microsoft and its ilk; and
  • Uses phrases like "unfortunately" when a lot of people don't consider it unfortunate at all.
Civility doesn't mean bending over backwards to avoid pointing out when someone's work isn't even close to NPOV. And pointing out what someone did wrong is exactly what I was doing - I was saying, "Stop letting emotions and personal affections dictate the content of the work". El T 03:19, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Deleted speculation

I deleted the following section from the article, on the grounds that is entirely speculation. --EngineerScotty 01:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

begin deleted text

Comparison with Web 3.0

There is even speculation about "Web 3.0". Some speculate it will be a web based operating system[1], perhaps a metaverse based on a system like the Croquet project. Web 3.0 will probably be much more distributed than web 2.0 and many of the current web 2.0 services will be gone. Social networking sites such as friendster may be replaced by semantic connections. A large part of Web 3.0 is decentralization of web services.

Instead of loading your pictures to the Flickr server you host the pictures on your computer which acts as a web server, or you may choose to use one of many hosting sites using a common standard instead of standalone sites like Flickr today.

This again seems to herald a return to the earliest web developers' view that most computer users would have something of value to publish onto a worldwide web of knowledge and information. Perhaps, even in the face of present-day security concerns, and the widespread lack of education about fundamental web concepts like HTML, CSS and HTTP, Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 will encourage everyday people, rather than expensive specialists, to publish their own work.

end deleted text

IIS

I removed the innacurate information that IIS comes with most Microsoft computers (and yes, I forgot to add an edit summary, sorry), as it is only included with XP Professional, and server editions of Windows (and in thre past with Windows NT). The new paragraph doesn't mention IIS, but this shouldn't be seen as an anti-Microsoft move. Lurker 12:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Internet 2.0 v Web 2.0

@The term "Web 2.0" refers to what some people see as a second phase of development of the World Wide Web, including its architecture and its applications. It was coined by Dale Dougherty during a meeting between O'Reilly and Associates (a computer book publisher) and MediaLive International (an event organiser) as a marketable term for a series of conferences [2].:

Well actually this is total bullshit, because the change in arcitecture is called Internet 2.0, not Web 2.0 (that's something different.) But hey, who cares, this is where we fiddle with thing! 81.151.28.63 15:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed new Intro?

I propose the following text for the article. What I am not sure of, and would welcome co-operation with, is:

  • where to put this (Intro - before the contents?)
  • how much of the existing article it can replace (The whole existing intro?)
  • can people who know their way around the important articles and blogs better than me find some citations to support the main statements (or to replace those statements with ones that can be cited to respected sources?)

Begin proposed text:

To its proponents, Web 2.0 refers to a collection of different technologies and practices. First there are a few actual technological advances that usually get included under its mantle. In each case, the technologies have been around for some years before this term came into use, and they were independently developed with no intention of them being part of any overall Web 2.0 development, but have come together or been co-opted more recently.

  • Web services are not normally visible to non-technical web users. An XML document, called a SOAP request, is sent to an HTTP URL. The web service responds with another XML document – a SOAP response – that fulfils the specification of the service. This XML response may be used to help create a visible web page for a person on line or it may be used for any number of other purposes. The definition of the allowed SOAP requests for a given service, and what its responses may comprise, is sometimes known as its 'web API'
  • RSS allows for a type of web site subscription. Users who have added a web site's XML RSS feed to their RSS application will be informed of news from that site in the days and weeks to come.
  • Ajax is a way for a web page to update some of its content in response to a user's click without a full 'round-trip' where the whole page must be rebuilt. This can make complex web pages more responsive to some user requests.

The main thrust of the Web 2.0 concept, however, seems to revolve around web sites or web pages that are published with software and styling but with no or very little initial actual content. Within the Web 2.0 paradigm, the web users themselves, using the software and restrictions designed into the system, will populate the content themselves. Examples of this include the following:

  • Web portal pages where the user picks, from predefined lists, a set of web parts that will be displayed on this page whenever this user re-visits it.
  • Bulletin boards, news groups and guest books allow web users to post their thoughts, and then allow other users to comment on previous posts or start new threads. The information posted is visible to all users.
  • Blogs allow web users to write articles that are immediately visible to the web public. Blogging software often includes bulletin board facilities that allow others to comment on, but not alter, the blogger's articles.
  • Wikis allow web users to create, edit and collaberate on whole articles and web pages directly, within a layout framework.

There are many more examples. The first example above only allows a user to edit what they see whereas the others allow alteration of public content. In all cases, access to the editing functionality may be restricted only to some users and in other cases alterations made may not become visible until some other authority has approved the changes.

There has been 'dynamic' content on many web sites for at least a decade. The difference that represents the Web 2.0 concept seems to depend on

  • the ease of alteration by the general public, using web forms requiring little or no scripting knowledge
  • the lack of initial content provided by the site's owners
  • the lack of authority needed to approve edits and changes

None of these ideas or technologies is, in 2005, less than some years old, and none of them was developed with the creation of 'Web 2.0' in mind. But Web 2.0 is now gaining currency as a business concept, and it may be a useful shorthand for a new emerging attitude to some of the latest capabilities of the World Wide Web and the Internet itself. What those who understand the technologies agree is that it is no kind of technical replacement for the current World Wide Web, but is more a way of describing some new web publishing paradigms and some new web business models.

End proposed text --Nigelj 22:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with the above wishy washy text. We are defining Web 2.0 for people who want to know what it is. So, statements like "The main thrust of the Web 2.0 concept, however, seems to revolve around web sites or web pages that are published with software and styling but with no or very little initial actual content." are useless and POV. When something "seems to" revolve around something, you are still looking for a definition and should in no way try to write a definition for other people.

The fact is (and even the most rabid proponents in this discussion are now finding it hard to deny this) that there is no definition of Web 2.0 - indeed there is no such thing as Web 2.0. It is a marketting hype term made up by non-technical journalists, salesmen etc, who have no real idea what the web or the internet is in the first place, but want to sell someone something.
My definition above tried very carefully to give this flavour - it "seems to" be whatever amorphous thing these guys are trying to make it sound like at the moment. As the comments above by Corby (22:20, 6 January 2006) make clear, this whole spin will be over in short while when the world catches up with the game. I still think that the main article should reflect this view more clearly, but I'm not prepared to get into revert wars over it with these fast-buck merchants. --Nigelj 19:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Bobbobbob2 removed my reference to the coinage of the phrase. Before getting into a revert war, can we get into a consensus that the term was coined to sell conferences?Flangazor 13:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of "Present-day web publishing" section

This section is not relevant to the Web 2.0 topic. Web 2.0 concerns the methodology of interacting via the internet through technologies such as AJAX. No significant part of it concerns where or how data is stored, retrieved, and processed.

The material as it stood belonged in an article explaining why computers serving content are not typically found in homes. Interesting though the topic may be, it is not relevant here, at least for as long as Web 2.0 is about interaction enabled by data rather than the data processing itself. El T 16:03, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

P2P

Is peer-to-peer part of Web 2.0 or not? It's not linked in the article. -- Nichtich 11:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

P2P doesnt use HTTP so it's not on the "web". It's a separate internet service.

Credit for origin of the term

The phrase is attributed here to Dale Dougherty, date uncertain but apparently of recent vintage. In reality, I very much doubt that he coined it. Here's an example, coming from Joe Firmage, dating back to March 2001 (PDF from the Wayback Machine's record of Firmage's OneCosmos.net site, look on page 17). That's almost certainly before Dougherty, in the context of planning for a conference that took place in 2004, I believe. In fact, I think it's probably impossible to really credit anyone with its invention, as it's such an obvious way to make a techie catchphrase (which partly explains why the meaning is so amorphous). --Michael Snow 06:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

RSS a new tech?

This article mentions RSS being a new technology. Is something that was invented about 6+ years ago considered new? --Amazon10x 01:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing in Web 2.0 is new, and a strong case could be made that the term is largely hype and bullshit. In that the term does apply it could be used to describe social trends that are becoming more apparent as various technologies become more widely used. --Artw 04:43, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
That's a bit harsh. I've been explaining this term to people (not involved in making technology), and some things resonate with them and some things don't. The simple and short explanation (though probably open to criticism as over-simplification and inaccurate) is that Web 2.0 allows you to replace applications on your PC. Instead, use a web browser as a window on to your application. This is then not tied to a particular machine or location. Anyway, this idea is immediately accessible to non-technologists, and generally goes down well. Stephen B Streater 11:24, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Precisely, Stephen,, it's a sales or marketing term for use when selling web-apps to non-technical people (aka 'hype and bullshit' in Artw's terms). All the technologies of these web-apps have existed for between 5 and 10 years, it's just that they've never heard of them, and - it sounds like - you've only just started selling them. That's what the article should say: not the present pile of hype and bullshit, with another countering pile of hype and bullshit trying to NPOV it.
First off - maybe we should, for a while at least, ban any use of the words resonate (as in your comment), silo, phenomenon, conversation, deeplinking, presence, garden, woven etc (all the rest in the article) unless used in some way vaguely related to the actual meaning of the word either literally or technically (only kidding here, but you see what I mean? ;-) --Nigelj 18:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Was the Web that new? BT claims to have patented hyperlinks, and the internet has been around for years. But the Web is qualitatively different from what was there before - at least in that the user experience was new.
What does Web 2.0 mean? It means that user experience is about to change up a gear. We don't know exactly how. I can see this directly in my own products eg FORscene. The people who use it could never have achieved this functionality before, even though the building blocks have been around for a long time eg Java, web browsers, fast PCs, broadband, video editing software, web and mobile phone video players. In fact, the product works exactly because these technologies have been around long enough for the installed base to have them.
There is a qualitative difference between a better HTML page and a complete video editing application. I like to define new ideas by examples, like O'Reilly did. There is the old way. Here is a more rich and interesting way.
Perhaps we should keep the definition much simpler and more general, and just give a Web 2.0 examples. Either way, I'm Web 2.0 ;-) Stephen B Streater 20:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

"It's A Whole New Web" article

The entry said: "Web 2.0 in the form that was introduced in 2004 started with a popular article in Business Week entitled "It's a whole new web"." However, that article dates from September 2005! That doesn't add up, so I removed the reference altogether for now. Please readd it in the appropriate place if you know what role exactly that article played in the popularization of the term (if any). --c3o 03:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Article, purpose and audience

I am writing an article on Web 2.0 and came across this Wikipedia article and have had to look closer into the veracity and quality of Wikipedia vs. traditional media to a greater extent than I had expected. In fact I have had to use the history function extensively to unearth items I knew used to be here, leads that are useful to my writings.

Writing, editing and comments here show with painful clarity that it is committed by too deeply rooted technologists with little, if any, perspective on the audience. Technologists are not the only audience. In fact business people and investors are equally importent. What made dot-com exciting was the availability of money that enabled smart people to create useful things that were made available to the general population. Web 2.0 therefore is not a technical label alone, it is a buzzword that is useful in re-attracting investors that got scared in the dot-com bust and subsequently retreated to the property market. Mass deletion of links to companies that might be Web 2.0-compliant is therefore counter-productive to technologists and actively unhelpful to business. --Artw 18:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC) This concept of Web 2.0 has to be a little vague (to attract investors) and a buzzword (to attract general interest). If there is too much fundamentalistic thinking going on here I propose someone create a Web 2.0 (business)-page. The more observant will have noticed I have not done it and the reason is that in my experience it is likely to be vfd-ed by rampaging deletionists unless there is something resembling consensus in here.

And please keep in mind that articles with a basis in technology can still be valuable to non-technologists. Having worked in technology and also in business for about 30 years I have a little experience in the mindsets of both groups. --12:42, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Hmm. I'm not sure that "business people and investors" is quite the same thing as "non-technologists". What exactly are you after? Also as far as I can see the overview section does it's best to address as many meanings of the term as possible (which, given that the term is fuzzy and undefined, and largely in the realm of "hype", is a pretty tricky task). I guess more links to companies might help you out, but TBH if too many are allowed this page will jsut become one massive linkfarm, which helps nobody. Other than that what exactly are you after? --Artw 18:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I am not sure either that "business people and investors" is quite the same thing as "non-technologists", thus I never claimed so. What I feel is that "business people and investors" often is a subset of "non-technologists" yet still a group that is important for funding of new ventures and a group that Tim O'Reilly catared for in his keynote conference. However I had hoped that my goal should have been clear: to cater for more than one group. As things stand now I see too much deletions of things that someone feel is spam and "largely hype" but that to others is useful information. I stated a few suggestions above too but I will for more clarity redtext them here: Web 2.0 (business) listing companies/websites making good use of Web 2.0 concepts and Web 2.0 (technology) listing amongst other things toolkits and tutorials, leaving Web 2.0 dedicated to define the term itself. Finally, I am also puzzled you inserted your signature in the middle of my questions at the end of the second paragraph of this section. --15:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Web 2.0 isn't really a "technology", so I'd be against any such split. Web 2.0 Businesses are not listed for the reasons stated repeatedly throughout this talk article --Artw 17:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Client section

Typical Web 2.0 applications tend to do most of their work on the server, limiting these applications to tasks which take a trivial amount of server CPU time. It seems that the full power of the Web (and that's what, deep down, we're talking about here with Web 2.0) will be unleashed only by using the power available in the client effectively.

Ajax is starting to move things in the right direction, with the clients starting to do some of the work. To me, Java is necessary as Javascript is too slow and primitive for such a task.

My company has made FORscene. (It's a pity people don't like the tone of that article, but that's Wikipedia!). The application allows real time editing of full frame rate video, then publishing and then hosting for Java playback.

There are increasingly many applications like this one, which are only possible because the client does the work. The point is that, as people get more sophisticated, the client is getting more important. Stephen B Streater 11:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

This section seems pretty uncontroversial, so I'll propose some wording: After the subsection "Server side software" to add a subsection "Client side software" as follows:

"The extra functionality provided by Web 2.0 depends on users having more than passive access to the data on the servers. This can be through forms in an HTML page, a scripting language such as Javascript, or through Java. These methods all make use of the client computer to take varying degrees of work off the server."

Stephen B Streater 11:04, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Now added, with some links. Stephen B Streater 04:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

It could also be argued that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new version of internet at all, and is in fact comprised entirely of "Web 1.0" technologies and concepts.

This needs more attention. Most of the "Criticism" section seems to be bashing "many" nameless sites, rather than actually critiquing the concept.