This week: Microsoft's Web 2.0 strategy, Google Base, Yahoo! travel, Web 2.0 Humour, 2.0 Post of the Week.
There's big news coming this week from Microsoft, on the consumer as well as business side. It sounds like Microsoft is really ramping up its Web 2.0 strategy.
Meanwhile, this week I wrote a few posts about Microsoft's corporate "hosted services" moves. According to InformationWeek, Microsoft plans to offer hosted implementations of SharePoint, CRM and ERP applications. From that article I jumped on a choice quote from an unnamed Microsoft source, who was asked which other products and services Microsoft would host: "Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted." From that I extrapolated that a Web-based Office product may be in the works. More details here, here and here. I also got quoted by InfoWorld.
Google's new database product was much discussed this week. What is it? Well the official Google Blog was typically vague:
"We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps."
In English then, Google Base is a way for people to upload anything from classifieds to reviews. It's being touted by many pundits as being a potential eBay killer and some vertical search engines are feeling nervous ("all your verticals are belong to us?").
But it may turn out they have nothing to fear. As TechCrunch put it:
"My prediction: when the dust settles, this will either be largely ignored or universally hated. Centralized content is boringÖso much is going on at the edge of the web, why would anyone try to put it all back in the center?"
Not to be outdone, Yahoo! was as busy as ever releasing new products this week. Firstly they released Travel Trip Planner, which will enable people to "enter a single search and get a fully formed trip, courtesy of a fellow traveler, back". The Planner will have access to content from thousands of Yahoo! Travel users - reviews and ratings of hotels, restaurants and things to do. It sounds very handy for holiday planners, and will become even more so when Yahoo! integrates booking options and perhaps promotional specials.
The business2blog found this very relevant Web 2.0 conference quote from Y! CEO Terry Semel, on the topic of travel:
"In my opinion, travel should be mostly user-generated content. I don’t need some [professional] to tell me where to go in Italy. I want someone to tell me who took their family to Italy and to share the photos and the video."
Yahoo! also released some Social media action buttons and video search features this week. I don't think the buttons are aimed at the tech community, but they'll probably be popular amongst the millions of mainstream users Yahoo! caters to.
There's been a lot of
excellent Web 2.0 humour this past week. Paul
Montgomery has a wicked take-off of an AC/DC song, called Two
Point Two Oh Ain't Web Pollution. Here is the chorus:
Two point oh ain't Web pollution
Two point oh ain't gonna die
Two point oh ain't Web pollution
Two point oh it will be flipped
And check out the picture! That's Gabe Rivera, Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Mike Arrington (who posted about it here). All that's missing is Richard "Ozzy Osbourne" MacManus - rumour has it I wear weird robes and bite the heads off bats!
Other humour 2.0 of note: Andrew Wooldridge's Create your own Web 2.0 Company and The Silent Penguin's TagTagger - the Web 2.0 tagging site that lets you tag tags. And if you're really serious about your humour, you should shell out for a Bubble 2.0 tee-shirt (I expect at least a 20% commission for that advertisement, Charlie).
Russell Beattie produced what is in my opinion the best anti-Web 2.0 post yet to emerge. Eat yer heart out Nicholas Carr and TheRegister. For those "professional" writers out there wondering what the secret is, here it is: Russ nails all that's not quite right about Web 2.0, but he stays optimistic and a believer in what is good about Web 2.0 (and there's a lot of that). I call it passion - it's what so great about blogs.
Anyway, here's Russ:
"It just seems that no one is trying to change the world any more. No one is aiming to create “insanely great” products or do the impossible. Why not? Why are so many people grasping at the low-hanging fruit, when there’s so much more goodness for everyone if they just stretched a little higher?
That’s just on the product functionality side - I haven’t seen anything interesting on the business side either. No one seems to be coming up with the next interesting new business model. I’m not looking for anything wacky, but there’s got to be better ways for your site to make money than waiting for Google to send you an AdSense check every month."
That's a wrap for another week!
I was quoted in an IDG InfoWorld story, entitled Gates, Ozzie seen unveiling hosted services next week:
"Some prominent Microsoft watchers, such as Richard MacManus, also have suggested a hosted version of Microsoft Office may be in the works. In his Web log, Web 2.0 Explorer, freelance Web analyst and writer MacManus on Sept. 28 outlined Web-based productivity suites from smaller vendors and predicted that Microsoft would eventually come out with its own.
"The time for the Web-based office will come, mark my words," MacManus wrote. "When broadband is ubiquitous, web functionality is richer, issues of security and reliability have been put to rest, and most importantly of all -- when corporates are ready to make the jump. It may be five to 10 years down the track, it may be longer."
MacManus, who writes from Wellington, New Zealand, did not respond to a request for an interview Friday."
It's a good representation of my thoughts on the subject, however unfortunately my actual email response to IDG didn't make it in time for publication. So by the power of blogs, I present to you now some further thoughts on the topic. These were formed in my recent posts and improved by reader comments (again, the magic of blogs):
I'm sure Bill and Ray will discuss their 'software as a service' strategy, as Gates has talked about it a lot recently - and that's basically Ray Ozzie's background (with Groove).
I don't see a web-based Office suite *replacing* the desktop suite, at least for the foreseeable future. I think it'll be an extra product offering and they'll offer hybrid versions (mixing and matching desktop with web-based).
An example of a benefit for customers is it would enable them to collaborate better with office colleagues. For example creating a document collaboratively, as a group, with the document residing on the web server and version control taken care of.
Another benefit is that a hosted solution would be a kind of extension of the IT outsourcing business model that is prevalent these days - if MS or an approved partner hosted Office toolsets, then that's one less IT toolset to administer.
Also a web-based office could be a good product for developing countries, which may be looking for more cost-efficient solutions than the desktop MS Office.
Web-based Office may ultimately be a strategy for Microsoft to compete with Open Source office software - and the rumoured Google Office.
My latest ZDNet column is a potential doozy:
Microsoft is leaping into hosted applications big time. InformationWeek reports that Microsoft plans to offer hosted implementations of SharePoint, CRM and ERP applications. But the best quote in that article was left till last. A "Microsoft insider" was asked which other products and services Microsoft would host and the reply was: "Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted."
Ahem, can anyone say Web 2.0 Office? Exactly a month ago I wrote what turned out to be a very popular post entitled The Web-based Office will have its day. My main focus in that post was all of the small start-ups that are currently building web-based office apps. I forgot to mention that of course there's nothing stopping Microsoft from building their own Web 2.0 Office! Perhaps that's their only option to head off Google, because Google Office has been rumored to be around the corner for 1-2 years now... [Full Story at ZDNet]
I'm really hoping this 'Dot Oh' term takes off - kind of like Dot Com, ay? :-) Anyway, Paul Scrivens has written a great post on the value of branding in the Web 2.0 world. Scrivs wrote:
"A major problem with this phase of the web that many people seem to miss isn't that companies don't have a business model, it's that they aren't doing a great job of communicating their message and their qualities to users. Look at the survivors from the last boom and what separated them from the rest of the field."
He goes on to mention Amazon and their initial brand as 'the largest bookstore in the world'. He also mentions Apple's brand of quality, simplicity and beauty. Those are both excellent examples.
My thoughts... I think the big Internet companies that have branded well are Google and Yahoo!. Google's brand is based on technical innovation. Their seemingly arrogant and engineer-focused "we're the number 1 technology company and we know it" attitude - that's all part of their allure. Yahoo!'s brand is the mainstream Internet company - taking care of The People, but making sure everyone knows they're technically astute too. They're also morphing into a media-technology company, which is positioning them beautifully in the current and future age of We Media.
I find Microsoft's brand in the Web 2.0 era to be confused. They used to be the number 1 technology company, but in this new world they're more fast followers than innovators. They're at least hard on the heels of Google and Yahoo!, and perhaps that's all they need to be at this point in time (given their huge resources and wealth).
Apple is great brand, no doubt about it, and they're almost above the Web 2.0 world. I once compared them to The Fonz. As well as the aesthetics angle that Scrivs mentioned, I think they have that 'cooler than thou' attitude that transcends the Web 2.0 meme.
Of the smaller companies, I have to hand it to 37Signals - even though personally I don't identify much with their brand. I think Feedburner has built up a great brand, as has Adaptive Path.
Blogging brands are important too. Indeed I joined Scrivs' 9rules network because they value quality individual blogger brands. Web design is one part of that, but much more important is the blogger's 'voice' and the things they represent. After all, RSS hides a lot of the web design branding from readers - so the voice and community aspects of a blog must shine through in its words.
Branding in Web 2.0 is just as important as it was in 1.0 and in the 80's even. RSS has thrown up more challenges and has made the 'voice' of a blog or company far more important than it used to be. I see that as a good thing, because media and communications have become more personalized and - yes - human.
Lots to eat today in Dot Oh Cafe. Here are some of the tasty tidbits that caught my eye as I perused the tech.memeorandum and Rojo menus:
Google Base is eating the lunch of many a hungry 2.0 start-up. Here are some of the mouth-watering dishes in Google Buffet (aka Base):
1. Course Schedules
2. Events and Activities
3. Housing
4. Jobs
5. News and Articles
6. People Profiles
7. Products
8. Reference Articles
9. Reviews
10. Services
11. Travel
12. Vehicles
13. Wanted Ads
SEW reports: Microsoft Announces MSN Book Search; Joins Open Content Alliance.
Seems to me they're trying out the recipes of Google and Yahoo.
Y! Search blog: Plan a Trip in a Single Search with Yahoo! Travel Trip Planner.
David Smith and Martin Lindner dig deeper into the strange world of Ted Nelson.
Yannick continues the filleting of Nicholas Carr.
In my latest ZDNet post, I scramble Semantic Web and Web 2.0 together (perhaps breaking some eggs in the process).
Podtech.net exclusive: IBM Supports Podcasting as a New Media.
So they're not just a meat and potatoes company.
Create your own Web 2.0 Company (via Om). Mine is Blinonorati, a "tag-based wiki via flash". Yum!
WebDosBeta is Spain's equivalent of the Web 2.0
Conference and it was held on 24 October in Madrid. I noticed it the other day in Technorati's Top 10 searches, but
at the time I couldn't find any English translations. Thankfully Yannick Laclau has come through for us
English-speakers and posted a fantastic
summary on his blog (hat-tip Rafat for passing
it on to me).
Yannick described the event as "an intense day of startup presentations and panel discussions" and noted that more than 150 people from all over Spain attended. I enjoyed Yannick's description of how WebDosBeta came about:
"This was a grassroots initiative started by Albert Armengol's post on the lack of innovation in Spain. Journalist Enrique Dans and SixApart's man in Spain, Victor Ruiz, picked up on this meme and the three of them kicked off, via the blogosphere naturally, the idea to hold a conference."
Those of us who don't live in the US could do the same in our countries. On innovation in Spain, Yannick wrote:
"It's alive! There are great hackers here, and totally cluedtrained entrepreneurs who are as internet-addicted, tech-passionate, and buzzword-savvy as anybody anywhere. But I guess the problem is that it's not a very large group, they're not clustered anywhere in particular, and are desperately undercapitalized. Almost everybody presenting seemed to be totally bootstrapped operations!"
That could very well describe any country outside of the US! And even in the US, outside of Silicon Valley.
Yannick noted that the best conversations at the conference were with "real entrepreneurs, even if their companies are tiny" - rather than the country reps of the big US Internet companies.
Also check out the list of companies that presented at WebDosBeta. There are some interesting-sounding ones there, but one in particular caught my eye. It's called EyeOS and is apparently an Open Source project to build a Web-based Operating System. On their webpage it's described as:
"...a free, cross-platform Personal Content Manager System based upon the style of a Desktop Operating System. The base package includes the whole Operating System structure and ten apps, as a Calendar, a File Manager, a Text Editor, an Internal Messenger, a Browser and a Calculator."
According to Yannick, EyeOS is the product of three "18-year-old catalan kids". It sounds like an intriguing product, so I've added it to my list of apps to keep an eye on (pun unavoidable).
Thanks Yannick for updating the English-speaking world on what was obviously a Web 2.0 event every bit as enjoyable and energetic as the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.
UPDATE: Albert Armengol points out in the comments that it was actually one of my posts that inspired Albert's post that led to the creation of WebDosBeta! Very cool :-)
In today's ZDNet column, I review Internet TV start-up Brightcove:
"Brightcove was presented at the Web 2.0 Conference and is what I would class as a disruptive Web 2.0 start-up - one to keep an eye on. Whether or not they meet their ambitious aim of becoming a Google-scale Internet TV business, will play out over time. One thing's for sure, watching their progress will be as entertaining as the many videos uploaded onto their platform." [Full story at ZDNet]
Also today I came across the latest project of a man who wants to tear down Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web and replace it with his own vision. It used to be known as Xanadu, but has since morphed into Transliterature, A Humanist Design. I am of course referring to Ted Nelson, who invented the term "hypertext" in 1965 and is generally regarded as a computing pioneer.
Ted Nelson recently wrote an essay about "Indirect Documents", which got Slashdotted today. In the essay Nelson outlines why (in his opinion) the Xanadu project failed and he explains his new vision for Transliterature. He takes a number of potshots at Tim Berners-Lee's WWW on the way, e.g.:
"Why don't I like the web? I hate its flapping and screeching and emphasis on appearance; its paper-simulation rectangles of Valuable Real Estate, artifically created by the NCSA browser, now hired out to advertisers; its hierarchies exposed and imposed; its untyped one-way links only from inside the document. (The one-way links hidden under text were a regrettable simplification of hypertext which I assented to in '68 on the HES project. But that's another story.) Only trivial links are possible; there is nothing to support careful annotation and study; and, of course, there is no transclusion."
Ted Nelson is certainly an original and I'm glad he's still around to throw spanners in the works. I've written about him before and I'm sure I will again, Web 2.0 or not.
This week: Anti-Web 2.0, Bubble Meme Map, Flock, Web Libraries, Techie Post of the Week - Ben Barren on Architecture Astronauts
This was the week when the Web 2.0 Naysayers reached a crescendo of cynicism and even bile. Some of the criticism about Web 2.0 is right on the mark, don't get me wrong. For example there are a lot of 'features as companies' going around. And I'm all for people pointing out the flaws in Web 2.0 business models and reminding us when marketing buzzwords get out of hand. But to dismiss the whole Web 2.0 era in one fell swoop, as some people are doing, is taking things too far.
I like how Alex Barnett put it, when he wrote that he's both a Web 2.0 enthusiast and "cynical of the dotcom Bubble mentality". In a similar vein, I'm currently trying to focus on the positive things about Web 2.0 by searching for disruptive start-ups and reporting on mainstream adoption of 2.0 technologies.
Here are some of the posts I wrote this week on these themes:
ZDNet: Disruptive Start-Ups: Some Contenders
ZDNet: The Great Disruptive Start-Ups Search, Part 1
ZDNet: Where are the disruptive start-ups in Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 Naysaying reaches an all-time high (or is it low)
Publishers sue Google - more evidence of 20th Century Media Delusion
There is no cult of the amateur, Mr Carr
Just to prove I haven't lost my sense of humour about the anti-Web 2.0 hype, here's a great parody by the Bubble 2.0 blog:
Plus in the spirit of Web 2.0, you can create your own meme map here ;-)
The other big news of the week was the release of Flock, a new type of web browser that has many 2.0 goodies in it. Flock got mixed reviews in the blogosphere, as captured by tech.memeorandum's coverage.
One of my favourite quotes about Flock was this from the Mini-AOL blog: "Will AOL users ever use it? I doubt it. Will Netscape users use it? Maybe. however I think as a technology Flock will be a positive experience to alot of people."
I too think Flock will struggle to make an impression on mainstream users, however the technology itself will be influential for many in the Web community - which may end up being reflected in spin-off technologies and trends. There's nothing wrong with that, indeed it's a sign of a healthy and growing Web. I wish the Flocksters well though and I hope they prove me and others wrong by attracting a mainstream audience to their new browser.
In all this arguing over the value or otherwise of the Web 2.0 meme, I've almost lost track of what is really important - how Web 2.0 ideas are being implemented in The Real World. I came across a great post by Michael Casey of LibraryCrunch, who is investigating what the Library 2.0 Web site will look like. He pointed to Michael Stephens' round-up of responses to that question, which are well worth perusing. I liked this one from Sarah Houghton, from Marin County Public Library and the Librarian in Black blog:
"The next generation small public library website will be moving up to the same level the larger public library websites are at now: blogs, RSS feeds, dynamic reading/watching/listening lists, lots of online forms, with links to some user-friendly and computer-friendly lightweight virtual reference options (like instant messaging)."
I have to admit I'm a big library user, so if my local library gets the functionality Sarah outlined - I will be one happy geek!
My aussie mate on 2.0 matters Ben Barren has pumped out some outstanding blog posts over the past couple of weeks. He originally started out as a blogger by mostly copying and pasting what other bloggers said. But he has a unique and compelling blog voice, so I'm pleased he's writing original material much more these days. If you've never checked out Ben's blog, it'll take a while to adjust to it - but you won't find a more original voice on Web 2.0. And his blog comes with pictures too ;-) Anyway I particularly enjoyed Ben's response to the Architecture Astronauts issue:
"What annoys me with this astronautical argument is that google already have the NASA deal, so the opportunity is taken. Time to move on. Adam Curry is talking about bio-diesel and thats in the right direction if you ask me. But seriously, If I was working at a hedge fund, and I was playing Nasdaq (while not messing with the federal bank of high debt 3rd world countries) I'd want to make as much money in (insert any market segment buzzword eg Web 2.0) and have as much fun with the market going down, as the market going up. The market isnt intrinsically good or bad. So why is Web 2.0 good or bad. I mean yes, the term sucks, but you dont have to put it on your business card. Compromise, put it on a blog card."
That's a wrap for another week!
While doing some research for a work project I'm doing currently, I came across this illuminating PEW report from January 2005, called Internet Evolution: A decade of adoption: How the internet has woven itself into American life. The following extract is from the introduction, entitled 'Internet: The Mainstreaming of Online Life'. Here it is, with one comment in italic inserted by me:
"The New Normal
The Web has become the “new normal” in the American way of life; those who don’t go online constitute an ever-shrinking minority. And as the online population has grown rapidly, its composition has changed rapidly. At the infant stage, the internet’s user population was dominated by young, white men who had high incomes and plenty of education [RM: not unlike the make-up of the Web 2.0 Conference attendees]. As it passed into its childhood years in 1999 and 2000, the population went mainstream; women reached parity with men online, lots more minority families joined the party, and more people with modest levels of income and education came online.
This transition altered the internet’s social environment. These early adopters loved the liberation they got from being online. They liked the fact that they could get news from nontraditional sources. Back in 1996, 56% of those who got political news online said they preferred the internet because they could get extra information that was not available from traditional news sources. At the same time, just 18% said they preferred the internet because it was convenient. These early adopters wanted to topple all manner of institutions and establish a new order in virtual space. They had a utopian sense of the transformative power of the new technology.
The later adopters are not looking to this technology to overturn the existing order. They like the internet because it can make them more productive and more connected. Theirs is an unsentimental outlook. Like most later adopters of technology, they need to be shown that there is a real, immediate and practical value in embracing the new."
1) Web 2.0 is still in the 1996 era in terms of Internet take-up;
2) perhaps some of us Web 2.0 pundits have been guilty of focusing too much on "utopian sense of the transformative power of the new technology"; aka the Bubble mentality.
3) the tipping point will be when Web 2.0 becomes convenient and practical for mainstream people to use - making them "more productive and more connected". We're still a year or two away from that point, I think.
It's an excellent report to read and a timely reminder to us all of the context of Web 2.0, within the ongoing evolution of the Internet.
Looks like the Web 2.0 Naysayers are starting to drown out those of us who've been preaching the 2.0 Gospel.
Joel on Software, who has a lot of influence in the programming world, comes down hard with his post entitled Architecture Astronauts Are Back:
"The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It's not a real concept. It has no meaning. It's a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness. [...] I hereby pledge never again to use the term "Web 2.0" on this blog, or to link to any article that mentions it."
Yikes! Then Dare Obasanjo, fresh from asking a thousand and one questions at the Web 2.0 Conference, adds:
"I am interested in discussions on the Web as a platform and even folksonomies (not tagging) but the marketplace of ideas has been polluted by all this "Web 2.0" garbage. Once again, I've flipped the bozo bit on Web 2.0. Like Joel, you won't see any use of the term on my blog or in items I link to from now on."
Oh and The Register is having a whale of a time mocking Web 2.0. This is the latest from "Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco":
"Web 2.0 is made of ... * Badger's paws * A magic swirling ship * Javascript worms * Recycled copies of Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 newsletter * Never mind, just give us the money"
But really, there's only so much unconstructive criticism I can bear. I'm a bit odd like that, but I hate reading cynical things - even if they're witty. So how about I finish this post with something that actually contributes to the Web 2.0 discussion, whether or not you think Web 2.0 is bullshit. Dave Winer has some thought-provoking questions:
"Isn't it interesting that between the supposed 1.0 (pet food companies doing high tech IPOs) and 2.0 (build to flip the Flickr of evrything) we changed millennia? Are we still creating monocultures?"
The serious and worrying thing for me is that I'm writing a book about Web 2.0. But then I believe there are a great many things of value in Web 2.0 and that's what keeps me going. My job is to distill all the signal from the noise - and most of the noise is coming from the anti-Web 2.0 brigade currently. I am also trying to pin down the long-term trends for the Web, together with the real disruptive things that are changing the Web.
Oy. So how was the TechCrunch party last night?
