Web 2.0: The Rise Of The 'People-To-People' Phenomenon
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"Web 2.0" became a ubiquitous buzzword this year, but an infinitely malleable one. Even its inventor, tech guru Tim O'Reilly, can't hammer out a succinct definition of what Web 2.0 is: "Like many important concepts,
doesn't have a hard boundary but, rather, a gravitational core," he wrote in a five-page essay that resorted to definition by example, name-checking Flickr, Napster, blogging, wikis and syndication.
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At heart, Web 2.0 celebrates the idea that today's most innovative services and
applications draw their power from the vast human network the Web connects. Sites like eBay and Craig Newmark's Craigslist rely on a critical mass of user contributions: As more users plug in, the network effect kicks in and the application's value increases.
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Some Web 2.0 pioneers are breaking down communication barriers in the IT industry. Sun Microsystems' Jonathan Schwartz is evangelical about CEO blogging, while former Microsofter Robert Scoble gained fame gracefully navigating the tricky waters of
diplomatically but bluntly about your employer. Wikipedia, launched five years ago by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales and now 1.4 million articles strong, helped popularize the concept of wikis, which are turning up all over.
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Other architects are building the tools that underpin a new wave of online applications. UI designer Jesse James Garrett coined the term Ajax (Asynchronous
and XML) to describe the bundle of technologies
uses to help its services mimic the feel of desktop software—then watched as
spread like wildfire through the application development world. David Heinemeier Hansson's Ruby on Rails development framework has a legion of devotees and his company, 37signals, is at the vanguard of teams building lightweight, elegant online applications.
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Web 2.0's prime movers are the creative coders who quietly invent the services they want to use, then rise to prominence as their creations attract like-minded enthusiasts. YouTube's creators—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim—built their site in a matter of months. Likewise for Kevin Rose's news-aggregation phenom digg, which went live soon after its creators dreamed up the idea.
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Of course, the IT industry has already been through the cycle of hype about radical new technologies and business models. Web 2.0 (or Bubble 2.0, as naysayers grumble) may simply be a flashy name for Web development's inevitable maturing. "If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people," Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee said in a recent IBM podcast. "That was what the Web was supposed to be all along."