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Web 2.0 has a Marketing Problem
As I sit here banging out the business plan for 10Speed Media, I am having a difficult time defining what Web 2.0 is in one simple sentence that actually means something to a non-techno, non-bay area nerd.Â
Is it blogging, RSS, AJAX, tagging? What is it? Is it even technology at all? Perhaps its just a new frame of mind? Can you really pin one technology on Web 2.0? If anything its RSS and RSS has not been widely adopted because the general Web population has yet to see its value. RSS adoption has been relatively slow compared to other revolutionary technologies. Considering RSS has been around for several years that’s a real marketing problem.Â
Web 2.0 was supposed to take the software out of the Web enabling users to generate content without needing to learn asp.net or php. Its accomplished that. The problem is the ancillary technology associated with Web 2.0. There is way too much emphasis on technology in Web 2.0. The market doesn’t get it or care. Most people look at AJAX and say “its about time”. They don’t care about the technology they just want to know if the technology solves their problems. Â
Tim O’Reilly thinks that Napster, tagging, cost per click, participation and SEO are Web 2.0 tenets. He also thinks that screen scraping, publishing, content management systems, domain name speculation and stickiness are tenets of Web 1.0. This list is full of holes and question marks. Does he seriously think that a P2P technology is Web 2.0? Where was he in 1999? If anything I would have said Napster = Web 1.0, iTunes = Web 2.0. But then again P2P is also the perfect example of what Web 2.0 is all about: sharing. I think technology is just technology. Can it really be classified to some timeframe? Yes it can, but is there really a “Web 2.0″ or is it just change and progress? This is confusing.
Flickr and del.icio.us, two services that seem to define Web 2.0, have been with us for sometime and they aren’t exactly taking the world by storm like ebay and yahoo did in Web 1.0. Why is that? Basecamp is a great service but can it really be called Web 2.0 technology? Online project collaboration isn’t exactly a new idea.
So when Web 3.0 comes along what is that going to look like?  Is it already here? Â
“So when Web 3.0 comes along what is that going to look like?”
Who knows? Rest assured, some marketing monkey will figure it out and let us know when it arrives.
This link “Web 3.0″ nails it:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0
I’ve read that about once a month since the beginning of the year and it never gets old.
Read, lather, rinse, repeat.
Left by Gabriel Gunderson on 04/20/2006