Leave a comment

This week is the Web 2.0 conference here in San Francisco. My company is a sponsor and my team is holding a small cocktail party on Thursday night to review some great research on consumers and RSS usage.

One thing i’ve noticed though, it seems like the conference organizers have realized there’s no better way to hype market the Web 2.0 conference than to get everyone blogging about the “What is Web 2.0?” question. So, of course, I’ll join in…

Richard McManus does a great job of laying out the simple point: no one seems to agree what the answer is.

Tim tries to lay it out simply:

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

And I actually kinda like that definition, but I still believe it focuses too much on technology. Yes, there are changes in technology, but what I’m seeing is so much more important: a shift in mindset. Looking at the Web 2.0 Meme Map that has been floating around, my favorite bubble here is:

“it’s an attitude, not a technology”

In my view, Web 2.0 is in many ways a return to the early days of the Net (is that Web 0.9??). The technology was simple, but the principles for the industry were there: enable people to communicate, enable people to connect, enable people to discover, enable people to express themselves and share. When we did that and enabled people, they did great things, created great content and left behind valuable information that we could use to build better products and a business around.

Web 2.0 is just the modern view of this premise: Put consumers at the center of the experience. It means building services around people in a thriving community (ala Flickr or even PageRank) and putting the consumer in complete control with a platform that enables them to easily do whatever they want, however they want.

Whatever you wanna call it, the midset is simple: focus on the consumer first and the technology second. That “attitude” is so much more Web 2.0 than any AJAX interface, API or hot little startup out there.

5 Comments

I’ve been blogging in one way or another for a couple of years, but every blog (until this one) has been a place to keep in touch with my friends and family or simply record things that I would otherwise forget about. My first blog was a travelogue, recording every detail about trips I took and places I visited so I could recall them when friends asked. My second blog is still (kinda) active and lives on Yahoo! 360. That blog is really for my friends and family and of late has focused on the work I’m doing on my backyard patio (exciting huh?).

So now comes this new blog. This time, I’m trying something new – a blog that might actually be read by people I don’t know personally (yet). And I’ll likely focus on more stuff about my professional life and the tech and internet industry at large.

My goals for this blog:

  • Write down my thoughts – I constantly am thinking about things, but they are “in one ear and out the other”. I’d like to have an excuse and a place to capture those
  • Be a better writer – they say that to become a better writer you need to write more. so there.
  • At least two posts a week – ok, so I’m aiming low, but I want to actually make it past my third post

What you’ll see here:

  • Things I’m learning about, especially more on being an effective manager
  • Things I’m questioning – I’d love to pose questions and get thoughts from you all
  • Bragging about my coworkers – there is so much cool stuff happening at work that I would love to share
  • Notable stuff in the tech/internet industry – I won’t usually be the first to point things out, but hopefully I’ll add an interesting thought or two.

What you won’t see here:

  • Secret stuff about Yahoo! strategy or what could potentially become strategy – I’m a bit paranoid about sharing something that competitors might use to our disadvantage.
  • Trashing my company, competitors or other companies – enough people are good at that, I’ll try to focus on the good stuff (although sometimes I won’t be able to contain myself)

Anyway, i’ve written enough, I hope you enjoy what you read here and more importantly, I hope you join the conversation. Use that comment form down there 😉