Last week we had a meeting in the office discussing web 2.0. Like many other companies, Oracle is about to release some products (webcenter) that enable you to build web 2.0 applications, so we need to find out what use it is to us and our customers.
Although web 2.0 is nothing new, it’s been 3 years since O’reilly started using the expression, many people still don’t really understand what it is. And those who think they do, all have different opinions. For some it’s Ajax, for others it’s about visual design of web pages, but mostly it has something to do with social computing and collective intelligence.
Well, like everyone else, I have my own ideas about web 2.0. In summary: web 1.0 is about copying things that existed before the web (shops, brochures, magazines, etc) to the web, and web 2.0 is about creating new solutions not really possible before the web.
A simple example: publishing. In web 1.0 you had newspapers or homepages that had no connection to other publications. Basically they were a one-to-one copy of physical publications. But in web 2.0 all the publications are combined to something more useful. The publications can be more connected. You can follow conversations. Based on a simple technology like rss-feeds, websites like techmeme are possible that allow you to easily see the bigger picture. Not just one website’s opinion, but all the info combined.
In the Netherlands we talk a lot about “kennis-economie”, which translates to “knowledge-economy”. This term is mostly used to indicate that today’s economy is based on knowledge from highly educated people. And to create a healthy economy we need to invest in education; the more knowledgeable people we have, the better the services and products we’ll create, and the more competitive our economy will be.
I think the expression “knowledge-economy” also fits web 2.0 very well. Maybe even better. The internet is all about information and knowledge, and web 2.0 is about making knowledge the center of your solution. And for many this translates to creating profits from knowledge. But the way to achieve this is unique to the internet: not by providing the knowledge, but by facilitating the creation of knowledge. By facilitating your users to add information. The most profitable web 2.0 companies will be the ones that know best how to collect data from the internet users, and are capable of turning that data into sellable knowledge.
In my opinion, Amazon has always been a web 2.0 company; from the start they have tried to be different than conventional bookstores. First by providing extra information themselves, and make it easy to order books from home. But later by using the knowledge of their customers. “What do other customers buy, what do they think of certain books, should I buy a different book on this topic?” This information makes Amazon stand out from other bookstores. Here in the Netherlands we have an Amazon look-a-like called bol.com. Functionally it is quite similar to Amazon, but they miss all the data provided by their customers. The result? I prefer going to a conventional bookstore and browse their books all afternoon. I can live without Bol. But inside the bookstore I’ll miss Amazon. “Is this the best book on the topic, or do people suggest a different one?” Bol.com is just a copy of a bookstore; Amazon has become something better than a bookstore, by using the knowledge of their customers. Amazon is one of the reasons I need mobile internet.
There are many examples of how user provided information creates better knowledge than knowledge created by a company. Google relies on information provided by internet users to find webpages: hyperlinks are basically votes for worthwhile pages, and the best hyperlinks even contain a short summary of the page it votes for.
The challenge is how to make the most of the information available. But maybe an even bigger challenge is how to collect as much information as possible. Adding information should be easy, fun, and worthwhile.
Ajax is one example of how you can make it easy. Easier user interfaces, less clicks, translates to more users adding data. But you could go further, why not provide desktop applications? Say you’d want to index the whole physical world, images of every place on earth, models of all buildings in the world. You could create a desktop application to manage pictures, and make it easy to for users to specify where the picture was taken. Or you could provide users with an easy to use program to draw buildings and a way to specify the location of the building. The easier you make it to provide data, the more data you’ll get.
There’s a good video on Google video that shows you how entering data can be fun: Human computation. Just turn it into a game.
And lastly, you can make it worthwhile by helping others achieve their goals. For example by proving functionality that can be embedded into other websites. Public API’s that will be used by external parties, but that will feed back data into your own systems.
So that’s what web 2.0 is all about in my opinion; knowledge-economy. Being better than your competition by having better knowledge, knowledge created by collecting data provided by the world outside your company.
One example I used last week was car navigation. We are currently still at Navigation 1.0. You buy a product from a company that contains information also provided by that company (or they buy it from some other company specialized in the data). Navigation 1.0 has no facilities to profit from data that could be provided by its users. If I’m stuck in traffic, I have the data. Why not use this data for the benefit of other users? But Navigation 2.0 is coming: Dash Wants To Bring Web Mashups To Your Car. This new navigation system collects data from all other dash drivers, and estimates how long alternative routes will take on any given day. Next step, collect road information from drivers. “If I’m driving here, there must be a road (or something that looks like it)”. Navigation 2.0 has the same challenges as web 2.0: how do I make it as easy as possible for users to provide me with data, and how do I make sure the data is correct and useful?
. The first session was about changing team behavior. A great in insight was given why people will resist on change. How (big)changes will influence the team performance and why it is better to introduce small changes. This is in essence why scrum uses team retrospectives to make small changes in the next sprint. The book Agile Retrospectives, making good teams great from Diana Larsoen was a great tip.
