Web 2.0, a Social Phenomenon Beyond Technology
The history and evolution of web 2.0
The Internet since it was popularised in the 1990s has gone through a series of dramatic events that saw the rise and fall of many e-business ventures; from the Internet boom to the infamous popping of dot-com bubble. Lately there is new buzzword associated to the Internet called Web 2.0, which has received a lot of media and public attention; everyone seems to be talking about it. As Burkhardt (2009, p.1) points out, “It is nearly impossible to avoid hearing about Web 2.0 and social networking in mainstream media publications and broadcast news—and it is not just technology magazines or TV shows either. For example, just about every recent issue of Time magazine has had an article on Web 2.0, social networking, or something related to those buzzwords”. As per all these hype, if the web we see today is web 2.0 then there should have been a web 1.0 and we must be able to differentiate what the web was before and how the web has transformed.
Silva et al (2008, p.2) states that Web 1.0 is a term generally associated to the early times of the Internet where Information was primarily created by experts and presented as discrete units. In other words, users were just consumers and any set of related information had to be sourced from different sites. As opposed to this, Web 2.0 is generally referred to the empowerment of users where they take an active role in generating the content. One of the first such differentiation as well as widely cited definitions for web 2.0 is by Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, who is generally considered to have come up with the term (Hendler J & Golbeck J, 2007, p.2). The concept of Web 2.0 evolved as a result of a Conference brain storming session between O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty, the Vice president of O’Reilly Media. These discussions were based on the increasing activities on the web post the dotcom crash in 2001, where by exciting applications and features were being introduced onto the Internet regularly. The conference produced a report, which identified all previous Internet features as Web 1.0 and the current and emerging principles and features as Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2005). Hendler & Goldbeck (2007, p.3) argues that, “In the discussion of Web 2.0, O’Reilly tends to focus on the technologies and not as much on the social phenomena underlying Web 2.0 applications. In the past few years, however, it has become increasingly clear with the growth of sites such as MySpace and Facebook that the social networking construct is critical to the success of Web 2.0 applications. The fact that sharing of content can be enhanced by personal connections, rather than primarily via search or other query techniques, has emerged as a major, and perhaps defining, aspect of successful Web 2.0 applications”. Not surprisingly, the definitions available for web 2.0 in the industry varies and it is being related to a number buzz words such as social networking, user generated content, participative web etc. associated to Wikis, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Podcasts, RSS Feeds etc.
So what exactly is web 2.0 then, is it just a marketing buzz word evangelised by the next generation of Internet entrepreneurs, is it an evolving model of technology standards and principles or is it a philosophy representing the revival in the use Internet gathering inspirations from previous lessons learned. One fact beyond any doubt is that the web has evolved to provide a set of innovative features that makes information very user centric facilitated by faster and stable Internet connections and the growth in communications technology. In order to analyse if web 2.0 is a technological trend, a philosophy or both, we need to examine the web 2.0 features in terms of the technological platforms powering these features as well as the capabilities that it offers and how does the users take advantage of them. Let us take a closer look at some of these continuously evolving features of Web 2.0:
Web 2.0 Features
The most prominent feature of web 2.0 is user generated content in the form of Blogs, images, music, video etc. Users are able to publish their content through any of the Blog sites, upload pictures to image sharing or social networking sites or they can upload videos to sites such as YouTube. Focussing the discussion on YouTube, It is the most popular video sharing platform on the web, providing a user, the ability to upload movies or even other content such as audio, presentations, tutorials etc all in the form of YouTube content and share it with other people. One might notice that the supporting technology of sharing video over the web has not changed much since web 1.0 times. So what is then so attractive about YouTube that has captured the attention of a user? Marcus & Perez (2007, p.928) argues that the capabilities offered by YouTube have more social context than technology. It allows user to watch video uploaded by others, exchange comments and reviews with other users. This capability adds social dynamics to the user, similar to watching a movie on a TV with a group of friends and talking about it and sharing their opinions. A user is able to collaborate with other set of tools as well, such as embedding a YouTube video within a Blog or in one of the social networking sites. Hendler J & Golbeck J ( 2007, p.3) argues that, it is this aspect of Web 2.0, to share the content and enhance it through personal connections which has become the major, and perhaps defining, aspect of successful Web 2.0 applications.
Another hallmark of Web 2.0 is the harnessing of Collective Intelligence by aggregating user data. Fine (2009) states that, “Collective Intelligence refers to any system that taps the expertise of a group rather than an individual to make decisions.” Technologies that contribute to Collective Intelligence include collaborative publishing and common databases for sharing knowledge. A good example of this type of collaborative authoring is Wikis, where the users have privilege to update the information. Quoting the success of Wikipedia, Tredinnick (2006, p.4) argues that, the veracity and credibility of information available on a topic is evolved through the consensus reached by the interactions taking place between several hundreds of users. This feature of web 2.0 has also paved way of services such as Flickr.com where images are tagged by users to be easily retrieved by others. This practise of collaboratively creating and managing tags to categorize content is also referred as Folksonomy or Social Tagging which is again a social phenomenon over the web. “The primary value of these services is not simply the addition of content but organization of content in a way that allows its discovery. Crucially, the system of classification and discovery is not driven by sophisticated organizational and search strategies, but by a network of associations that emerges in the process of opportunistic user behaviour “ Veres (2006, p.2).
This Collective Intelligence is also the basis for another web 2.0 phenomena called the Crowdsourcing (Howe, 2007, p.1). Howe Jeff (2006, p.1) who coined the term defined Crowdsourcing as “an act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call”. Brabham (2008, p.3) argues that Crowdsourcing thrives from the collective problem solving where a company posts a problem online to a wide audience for solutions. The accepted solutions are compensated and the company uses the solution for its own business advantage. Popular examples are Apple’s Iphone application market where freelance developers are able to sell their apps through i-Tunes store and earn hefty share of the sales and Apple on the other hand uses the popularity of the applications to drive the sales of their iphones. So instead of Apple developing the applications to boost the sales, they have successfully outsourced to a global crowd of freelance developers. Another example would be istockphoto.com that sells royalty free stock photography collected from its members who are freelance and hobbyist photographers.
Web 2.0 in the Business World.
Web 2.0 features have also influenced the corporate world and business models worldwide. Until recently, the networking opportunities provided by the web 2.0 were looked upon by Corporate leadership as causing distraction in the workplace and reducing employee productivity. However, as seen from the trend the benefits offered by web 2.0 are being harvested by may organizations to the extend that they have opened their own Corporate Facebook accounts to bring their employees together and form an online community. Those organizations that fail to see the value of web 2.0 features have been accused of being hypocrites (Tindal, 2007). Ali N & Deans P (2009, p.12) states that Enterprises need to take the advantage of features and popularity of Web 2.0 and move towards creating a more collaborative space as well as use it for innovation and gaining competitive advantage. Many retail industry players are using web 2.0 features to facilitate consumer generated content such as reviews, blogs, customer testimonials etc to promote sales of their products by converting browsers to buyers (Harrell D, 2009, p.4). Web 2.0 is even being integrated into the portfolio of strategic marketing channels where companies can connect to their consumers (Brayant, 2009). Crowdsourcing is also one area where businesses are reaping benefits from the Collective Intelligence made available by web 2.0 for problem solving and innovation. Companies like Chrysler, Sony, Jet Blue and Mastercard etc have been quite successful in generating user generated advertising through web campaigns, which provides an opportunity for a consumer to be part of the marketing as well as showcase their talents (Bosman, 2006). Nike uses the site www.nikeid.nike.com to collaborate with their customers and empower them to create their products and order them (Parker, 2007, Video-08:30 ). According to Helm (2006), Warner Bros called it quits with the law suits against Peer-to-Peer movie download sites and formed partnership with Bittorrent, once a leading pirated movie distributor on the web, to distribute and sell over 200 Warner Brother movies. The driver behind this business model is the mob that is actively engaged in downloading and re-distributing movies through bittorrent.
Web 2.0 and Social Impacts
A much-debated aspect of Web 2.0 is its impact on the social life of its users, consequently affecting the norms and behaviour of our society as a whole. As discussed above Web 2.0 features have revolutionised the way we collaborate and communicate. In praise of Web 2.0, the features definitely help us to stay in touch with friends and family especially those who are separated from us by distance. However in that process of tweeting and blogging using our “anytime-anywhere” gadgets, we have also began to ignore the person sitting next to us on the train. The so-called social interaction has in fact substituted our otherwise physical interaction with people who are immediately around us. Instead of catching up with friends over coffee or dinner, we prefer to use the social media to stay connected. This means that, with all the capabilities that Web 2.0 provides us, we have created a virtual life that is taking over our physical social life. But this new and evolving social behaviour over the web has also its advantages. Bill Gates argues that, the same empowerment and breakthrough provided by web 2.0 that enables us to connect with people at distance and communicate with others who share common interest etc, also has the incredible potential to be used to bring other benefits to the society such as education and healthcare (Gates 2007, Video@32:45). Web 2.0 has even changed political campaigning forever. The feature of Web 2.0 where information cannot be controlled is being leveraged as a tool enabling social transparency, especially in non-democratic countries and web 2.0 is turning into voice of the People to become the torchbearer of democracy and human rights. (Reding 2007, Video@34:15).
Future of the Web
Given the trends and growing popularity of the Web 2.0, what is the future of the World Wide Web?. Pundits are already calling it Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web which is “a vision for the Web to become a medium for machines to be able to understand, relate, and compile information without human intervention” (Burkhardt,2009, p.13). Web 3.0 is also called the Intelligent Web where information shall reside in a structured way which can be understood by Machines. In this context many Web 2.0 features such as tagging and folksonomy will form the foundations for the future web. There are various expert points of view available in terms of what Web 3.0 and future of Internet holds for us. However, all these predictions points to a vision of the web, to be accessible by any user from anywhere at anytime, renderable to any device over heterogeneous networks. (Silva et al, 2008. p.2)
Conclusion
The difference in technologies between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is significant only to a level of usual incremental growth observed in any other fields such as Broadband, Communications etc. But the phenomena called Web 2.0 that has taken the virtual world by storm has high social context in the use of technology. Burkhardt (2009, p.5) argues that fundamentally there are no differences between the technologies used between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, “it is just a simple way of recombining and repackaging the technologies that have been around for some time”. Therefore we could come to the conclusion that Web 2.0 is not a technology driven phenomenon. However, the transformation from Web 1 to Web 2.0 is a revival in the use of technology. Paul (2005) calls Web 2.0 as “equal parts of evolution and revolution” where it extends what we have been doing with web 1.0 standards such as HTTP, URLs etc at the same time challenge all the conventional attitudes towards the rights of the users and how they are empowered by technology. The mob is extending their life to the virtual world, creating profiles, tweeting, blogging, podcasting and thereby creating an online presence surpassing their physical presence. Therefore we could say that, Web 2.0 is social phenomenon over the web catalysed by reliable and faster Internet connection popularised by its usability and accessibility. In 2006 Time Magazine called Web 2.0. “The new version of the old version, but a revolution in the use of Internet”, far different from the over hyped dotcom of the 1990s, and way ahead of its original intent envisioned by founding pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee. The web seems to have taken a new life bringing together millions of people across the globe to one platform of collaboration and communication. The web has moved on from selling and buying goods online to content gathering spree, collecting thoughts, knowledge and information from its own users and disseminating it to millions who flocked to the web to access them and further enhance it through their own contributions (Grossman, 2006). Web 2.0 is fuelled by an outpouring of creativity from the people formerly known as consumers (Howe, 2007). As quoted by Miller (2005):
‘Web 1.0 took people to information, Web 2.0 will take information to the people‘.
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Uncategorized | admin | 19 July 2009 |
