That claim is probably meant to fight back against some people's initial concerns that hosting files on their own PC will leave them open to attack. However, simply addressing security issues is somewhat missing the point about the real trouble with Unite: it's not solving a problem we actually have.

According to the interview, Tetzchner addresses the concerns of those in the security community who fear this technology that aims to put a web server on every PC. He says, "when you're hacking a single system, if you have everything that belongs to everyone in one location, you only need to break in once. If you have it in different computers it's a little more complicated. If you get into one Web server and everyone's data is in there, that's easier than getting into a million computers."

While Opera and the tech community continue to debate the technology's security or lack thereof, the rest of the tech early adopters have simply moved on. Outside of the Opera fanatics (we know who you are!), most of us either skimmed the news briefly or, at the most, may have downloaded the alpha and played with it for a bit. But did the lot of us switch browsers and start sharing files? No.

Why is that? Shouldn't this be just the sort of thing that has techies all a'twitter? What's going on?

Where's the Geek Love?

When Opera revealed the mysterious (and perhaps overly-hyped) Unite, they probably didn't get the response they expected. After numerous emails and teases about a new technology that was going to "reinvent the web," for the most part, the community response was "huh?"

Oh sure, Opera fanboys and girls got it right away as did web developers and other geekier-than-thou folks, but even within the tech community itself, there was confusion...and a bit of "bah humbug" too.

We remember reading through various blog comments where users dismissed Unite as nothing more special than a browser with P2P plugins - a statement that's only true to a point. While the technology enables P2P between browsers, it does so via a proxy server in the middle at operaunite.com. That middle service could easily be a single point of failure for the Unite infrastructure. Opera Unite's proxy goes down, you go down. Sure, that might not be any different than the cloud services we rely on now: Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc. However, even if one of those was to crash-and-burn, it wouldn't take our whole web of services down with it.

But Unite wants to replace just about every cloud app you use today with its own apps for file sharing, social note-posting, chat, photo sharing, and media playing...and that's not to mention how Unite wants to let you host your own web server, too. In other words, Opera wants to (partially) move the cloud back off the the web to your PC.

They even go so far as to claim that their single point of failure is an improvement on what we do today: "We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet," writes product analyst Lawrence Eng.

Thanks, but we'll take our numerous cloud apps over the Unite+PC combo any day.

What Problem Does Unite Solve?

When we started moving from desktop to web, initially testing the waters with email services, later moving to photo and video sharing services, and finally to social networking sites like Facebook that let us communicate and share media, the solutions being implemented were solving real challenges. Setting up desktop email was hard for non-techies (what's my email server's address? what's SMTP?). There were mailbox storage limits and attachment size limits. Letting grandma and grandpa see our digital photos wasn't easy. Getting in touch and staying in touch with our wide network of friends was downright impossible. But then these web applications came along and made it possible for everyone to use technology. They were simple, straightforward, and fun. And soon a Web revolution was underway. A real one, that is.

What problem does Opera Unite solve that could kick off the next revolution of the web? Are we having trouble with cloud services? Are we concerned that they're so insecure that moving everything via P2P through Opera is somehow better? Is Unite easier than Facebook? Than flickr? Heck, than email? No.

It's not easier for us techies by any means (especially since its tied to one browser) and it's not even close to being easy for the "regular folks" of the online world...you know, the ones who don't even know what a browser is

So security concerns aside, what is Unite doing for us that we can't get elsewhere? Anyone?

If you think we're missing the point, chime in below.

Take foraging as an example. Whenever an ant finds food and carries it back to the nest, that ant leaves a chemical trail (pheromones) along the way. Other ants sniff the chemical trail and follow it toward that same food source. As more ants find the food and carry it back to the nest, the path gets a stronger chemical dose and, in turn, becomes more attractive to fellow foragers. Individually, these ants are following a simple set of rules and acting on local information: follow the pheromone clues and bring food back to the nest. However, the colony as a collective is behaving in quite a complex way: creating a sophisticated highway system that leads to the best food sources.

Collective Intelligence and the Web

So, what do ants and chemical trails have to do with the web? For starters, lessons from colony behavior can be applied to enhance the way we search for information, products, and solutions.

The Internet puts an unprecedented range of goods and information right at our fingertips. And while we now have the ability to find what we want, when we want, many are finding that more isn't necessarily better. As Barry Schwartz explains in "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less," too many options actually cause more psychological distress than good.

Think about it. How many times have you abandoned a search after hitting page 7 (or maybe 2) because you couldn't find what you were looking for, and then ended up doing multiple searches with different search terms? The sheer enormity of results often makes searches exhaustive, tedious, and overwhelming; we're forced to wade through pages of results before finding the product or link we want.

Of course, the answer is not to limit the available products or retrieved results. After all, access to this rich "long tail" of goods has been a key driver behind the success of many online retailers. Instead, websites try to minimize this search exhaustion by predicting what a person really wants and putting these products up front. It's a great idea in theory, but not so easy to implement in the real world.

The Limits of Web 2.0, and the "Squeaky Wheel" Syndrome

With a strong foundation in collaboration, community, and user participation, the Web 2.0 movement seemed to solve this dilemma by factoring in the contributions of users to narrow down choices. Eager community participants can make their voices and opinions known through user reviews, recommendations, ratings, tagging, and more. Websites have tapped into these crowd-sourcing techniques to determine the relevance of search results. While these methods may help tame the tangle of options, they suffer from one major problem: bias.

Traditional crowd-sourcing demands active participation from its members. The problem here is that not everyone contributes. Only certain types of individuals are likely to make an effort, and they are driven by various motives, from a mere hope to be noticed in a crowd to an altruistic desire to help others to a need to rant about a negative experience. In short, only a subset of the population (the squeaky wheels) will participate, significantly limiting the sample pool and possibly skewing the results with personal bias and inaccuracy.

But what if there was a way to sidestep these biases and gather a perfect representation of consumer attitudes by tapping into the opinion of every single person who visited a site or conducted a search?

Back to the ant colony...

The Next Phase of Social Search: the Super-Community

Watching a trail of ants march toward crumbs of food, it's hard to imagine that ants aren't aware of their actions. But according to studies on swarm intelligence, what appears to be intelligent behavior actually results from nothing more than the complex interaction of simple actions.

Likewise, websites can tap into the implicit wisdom of the community to more accurately predict the most popular and relevant results of any given search. There's a wealth of information in the everyday online activity and behavior of website visitors: every successful or failed search, every page visited, every purchase or abandoned cart represents valuable information. These natural behaviors and actions reflect the true and unbiased opinion of the community as a whole.

By listening to these implicit actions, website owners can gain new insight into the preferences of the silent majority; by leveraging the data, they can optimize results for future searchers. Just like ants that leave a chemical trail each time they bring food back to the nest, we leave real-time feedback each time we visit a page or select (or ignore) a result.

With each search, we unknowingly participate in a cooperative design that improves the search experience for all searchers to follow. Simple, self-guided actions -- entering keywords and selecting results -- drive the greater common good. And as more people participate, both the chemical trail and the overall system grow stronger.

This new participatory strategy gives greater power to the super-community, in which the collective intelligence of all site visitors is harnessed to create a better search and shopping experience for everyone. With each search, the community carves out a faster, more efficient pathway to desired information and products, no different than the trail of pheromones leading to food sources. And like the ants, web searchers act as a collective team (whether they know it or not), yet another example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Scott Brave is a founder and CTO of Baynote, Inc. Prior to Baynote, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and served as lab manager for the CHIMe (Communication between Humans and Interactive Media) Lab. Scott is an inventor of six patents and co-author of over 25 publications in the areas of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. Scott is also an Editor of the "International Journal of Human-Computer Studies" (Amsterdam: Elsevier) and co-author of "Wired for speech: How voice activates and advances the human-computer relationship" (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Scott received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, and B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, and his Master's from the MIT Media Lab.

(Photo by Il conte di Luna.)

I've been thinking for a while now about re-focusing Read/WriteWeb onto more media-related Web technologies. Many of the things I'm interested in are being done by Yahoo!, which by now is generally recognized as a media company. Web-based media assignments make up the bulk of my freelance work, for various companies in Silicon Valley. So for the sake of my career it makes sense to re-focus Read/WriteWeb onto Web media.

So that's one factor. Another is of course the hype and cynicism around the term 'Web 2.0'. I've been writing about Web 2.0 for well over a year now, much longer than any other blog out there that proclaims itself to be about Web 2.0. I thoroughly enjoyed it, up till about a month after the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005. But in the last couple of months, the enjoyment has gone. Part of the reason is the number of cowboys and critics that have entered the 'discussions'. Most of the attraction of blogging for me is in having great discussions with other people passionate about the Web. What I've been dealing with lately is responding to, or (when I'm in a more sensible mood) filtering out, people who most certainly AREN'T passionate about the Web. It's literally draining the energy out of me and making blogging an unpleasant experience. I never thought I would say that. So I knew I had to change something.

But why turn my back on Web 2.0? Well let me just clarify that what I'm turning my back on is the actual term 'Web 2.0' - not the technologies and definitely not the social changes we're seeing in this current era of the Web. Personally I want to focus back on the Web technologies, rather than arguing about what is or isn't 'Web 2.0'. I love the Web and always will (overly sensitive and heart-on-sleeve person that I am). But it's the core concepts of the Web that I'm interested in and what I want to focus on. If you want to continue to attack or defend 'Web 2.0', then be my guest. Just don't expect me to participate in that any more.

I want to respond to a few people that I respect. I've gotten to know a lot of great people over the past year and Mike Arrington has been one of them. He's a bit annoyed by my outburst, going so far as to invoke Kyle from Southpark. Mike wrote:

"Look at Flickr. Look at Delicious. Look at Riya. And 1,000 more. My God, how dare you tell me that someting amazing and new, completely new, hasn’t happened on the web. Web 2.0 isn’t about wikipedia definitions and neatly wrapped bundles of functionality that non-innovators can use to understand what’s going on. It’s about the web coming out of a nuclear winter and bursting forth in a fit of chaotic growth. It’s about hope and love and getting ridiculously wealthy by ignoring the wisdom of those around you who say “your idea, it sucks”.

Don’t be so eager to tear down this castle in the sky. It may not be so easy to build it yet again.

:-)"

The mistake I've made over the past year is getting too obsessed by definitions - the Wikipedia one and others. Mike never fell into that trap and so he is 100% correct to say that it isn't about definitions. We are in a new era of excitement about the Web and that is, I guess, as close to anything the definition of Web 2.0. That's fine, but I just don't want to blog about the excitement (or otherwise) of this thing called 'Web 2.0' anymore. That's all I'm saying. It's time for me to get back to writing about what I love about the Web.

I've always respected Dave Winer and just lately I've had to deal with some of the same kind of vicious vilification he's had to endure for years (it's probably been ten times as worse for Dave). Here's what he wrote in response to Russel Shaw's piece:

"In a sense people are right when they say it's another bubble. It's dishonest like the bubble was. Yet the technologies they're hyping are honest."

I love that last sentence: "Yet the technologies they're hyping are honest." Exactly, that's what it's all about. Thank you Dave.

Dion Hinchcliffe also wrote an interesting post in response to mine. He wrote:

"Unfortunately, folks like Russell Shaw (author of the ZDNet article mentioned above), seem to think that Web 2.0 is an attempt to describe something enitrely new. It doesn't. As Tim O'Reilly made clear in his seminal description of Web 2.0 earlier this year, it represents the ideas that actually worked in the first generation of the Web. The arguments that folks like Shaw use, like saying that Web 2.0 is too big an umbrella, and represents unrelated concepts, and is nothing new, shows how uninformed even the experts are. And also represents a poor job by the folks that discuss it publicly (though the Web 2.0 Workgroup is certainly trying.) Unfortunately, all of this creates a distorted and incomplete view that is then propogated by the mainstream press, making it worse."

I think this actually reinforces my point: Web 2.0 as an umbrella term has become too problematic a term. It's simply not worth arguing about any more, in my view. Let's just get back to making and using great Web software.

Don't get me wrong. Web 2.0 was great while it lasted - and it still is a great name for a conference. But it's time for me personally to move on and focus on the real value in the Web today. Which for me means leaving behind the Wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 and all the peripheral garbage from cowboys and critics.

To the people wondering what this means to the Web 2.0 Workgroup or my ZDNet blog Web 2.0 Explorer. As I commented in the last post, those will continue. It doesn't bother me that they're called Web 2.0 Workgroup and Explorer. It's just the whole debacle around defining Web 2.0, all the buzzwords, all the cynicism, the personal attacks, etc - that I've had enough of.

I'll continue to explore Web technology, nothing has changed or will change in that respect. Here's to 2006!

#1 - Podcasting Ratings
#2 - Better Blogging Tools
#3 - MySpace meets Linkedin
#4 - Non-Text RSS Reader
#5 - RSS Search/Reader Attention Glue
#6 - Images for Adsense
#7 - Podcasting Creation Tool
#8 - Enterprise Vanity Search
#9 - Blog/RSS Syndication Tools
#10- Asia Pacific RSS/Blogging/Web 2.0

My personal favorite is number 10: Asia Pacific RSS/Blogging/Web 2.0. As Ben said:

"The Solution : Combination of Build and Import the best of Web 2.0 to Australia and AsiaPacific, dealing with only the best people. Order of Opportunity Rollout - RSS Search, RSS Reader, RSS Sharing, Web, Image + Video Tagging + Sharing, Local Communities and Meta-Classifieds Search. Region by Region : Aust/AsiaPac/UK...."

I've been talking with Ben about some of this, so expect interesting things to emerge in the new year. Remember this is the part of the world where Rupert Murdoch and Peter Jackson come from, so you know there's huge potential for innovation down under.

Only I for one won't be calling it Web 2.0 next year. That's so 2005...

"In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights. [...] Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space."

Needless to say, Tim Berners-Lee has been a huge influence on me. I pretty much named my blog after him. As I wrote in my very first blog entry on April 20, 2003:

"The World Wide Web in 2003 is beginning to fulfil the hopes that Tim Berners-Lee had for it over 10 years ago when he created it. The web was never just supposed to be a one-way publishing system, but the first decade of the web has been dominated by a tool which has been read-only - the web browser. The goal now is to convert the web into a two-way system. Ordinary people should be able to write to the web, just as easily as they can browse and read it."

Welcome to the blogosphere, good sir. We wouldn't be here without your work.

Oh and of course: subscribed! ;-)

As Jon Udell wrote, lightnet is "the antithesis of the walled-garden darknet". The term darknet comes from the JD Lasica book.

Lucas wrote me an email to tell me how lightnet intersects with Web 2.0. I'm sure he won't mind me quoting this bit:

"...the benefits of web 2.0 can accrue to audio and video just as much as to web pages and feeds. For example, webjay-ish URL playlists are remixes in the web 2.0 sense..."

I couldn't agree more and I fully support the opening up of rich media to allow remixes - and other forms of 'user' creation.

The Lightnet Tron, c/o daysofleisure.com:

"...I think the talent wars will be good for cities outside of the Valley, as companies look elsewhere to find smart people. It's already possible to stay connected and contribute from almost anywhere in the world."

He mentions my New Zealand-based blog as an example of how people as far away as the other side of the planet can contribute. I'd like to add that I actually earn my living as a consultant/contractor for various Silicon Valley companies - even though I live in New Zealand. I do analysis, research and writing work on Web 2.0, Social Media and RSS topics.

Dan also said that "we'll see an increasing number of important startups based outside of the Valley over the coming few years." Again, I think this is a trend to watch out for. Not only in big countries like China, but in very small countries like my own. I'm certainly keen to create and participate in Web 2.0 opportunities from my part of the world. You only need to look at a company like NZ-based Eurekster, creator of Swikis, to see that it can be done.

On that note, recently Nat Torkington from O'Reilly set up a Google Group for New Zealand Web 2.0 people, called NZ 2.0. Ironically this was instigated after Silicon Valley's Mike Arrington referred a local kiwi company to me, which led me to send a group email to a bunch of kiwis, which led to Nat creating the Google Group. So if there are any kiwis reading this who want to be part of NZ 2.0, shoot me an email (readwriteweb AT gmail DOT com). It's all happening Down Under! :-)

"Richard MacManus talks about The Big 3, and there is a trend to think about three companies -- Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- as the leaders in online. But I don't think that really works, because well, there are three more that are probably just as powerful as the others, but in different ways."

In the comments it emerges that Dave was referring to Amazon, eBay and Apple. Personally I think a good case could be made for eBay, but I don't see Amazon or Apple as being in the same league.

Dave McClure, also in the comments of Dave's post, came up with a ranking system:

"Tier 1: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Tier 2: eBay, Amazon, Apple Tier 3: AOL, IAC/Ask, NewsCorp/MySpace

actually, i'd say AOL is Tier 2.5, but will either partner/merge with a Tier 1 within another 3-6 months."

That'll get the anti-A-List crowd squarking! But when it comes down to it, I agree with Dave McClure's tier ranking.

One main caveat is that the ranking of Internet companies is very much dependent on the era we're in - and is subject to rapid change. For example, I'm currently reading a book called 'There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future', by Kara Swisher. The book is based in the era when AOL was Tier 1 and maybe even the numero uno Internet company. One story from that era was that AOL tried to buy Yahoo! for $2 million in around 1995 - but was rebuffed. How times change!

"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.

"We didn't want to simply bolt new features onto old interfaces. We needed to rethink email, but at the same time we needed to respect that email already had over 30 years of history, thousands of existing programs, and nearly a billion users. So we started by learning which features were most important, and which problems were most aggravating. We also realized that solving everyone's problems was too big of a challenge for the first release. It would be better to build a product that a lot of people love, than one that everyone tolerates, and so that was our goal."

Gmail was released on 1 April, 2004. Apart from the gimmick of offering 1000MB of storage, Gmail had these innovations:

"Gmail included a quick and accurate search. It introduced powerful new concepts to organize email, such as the conversation view (so now I can finally see all those replies at once). It provided a fast and dynamic interface from web browsers everywhere, popularizing the techniques that have since become known as AJAX."

I'm a big fan of Gmail. Even though it's not perfect and the occasional "oops please check back later" messages can be annoying, Gmail is to my mind the first email system that was built purely for the Web. There were earlier web email systems, of course - Hotmail and Oddpost for example. But it wasn't until Gmail came along that I felt comfortable using a Web email system as my main and preferred method of email (I hardly touch Outlook now). That's because Gmail is in the same class of functionality as Outlook, only it has Web-native features such as the ability to check your email from multiple computers.

Some people prefer their Web email systems to mimic the functionality of desktop email systems. Sure it's easier for people to adjust to Web email if it's the same paradigm as desktop email, but the Web era is different in many ways to the PC era and so Web email should reflect that. Gmail was an outstanding attempt at introducing new concepts to Web email and they've largely been successful.

Say what you like about Google's stand-offish nature and perceived arrogance, one thing I admire about Google is that they continually look to disrupt (there's that word again) traditional computing paradigms and markets.

I'm looking forward to the next round of Gmail innovations. Thanks Paul for the great post!

Om Malik: "a “collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect."

John Hagel: “an emerging network-centric platform to support distributed, collaborative and cumulative creation by its users.”

Susan Mernit: "The enduring lesson of all of the social media and emerging technologies is that we've created an a la carte, do it yourself platform where users can engage with sophisticated forms of search, feeds, metadata and APIs, social networks and identity, and commerce and fill these vessels with their own information..."

Dave Winer thinks it's The Two-Way Web redux. (and it's interesting to note the focus of my weblog before Web 2.0 was precisely that - Dave's Two-Way Web vision).

Wikipedia's current definition: "Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications, like Gmail, to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes."

I of course have had more than a few attempts at defining Web 2.0 - here at the beginning of 2005 (when I linked to a bunch of 2004-era definitions), here again on my ZDNet blog (when I linked to a bunch of Sep 2005-era definitions).

p.s. Ken at technosight.com is holding a blogoposium to try and nut out more definitions.

I go around parroting "The Web is a Platform" as my main definition of Web 2.0 - and 'platform' is a word almost always used when talking about Web 2.0. But obviously that's not the whole story and it's not a suitable definition to tell your family. So here is my current Elevator Pitch for Web 2.0 - two paragraphs, so it'd take a few minutes for me to say it in an elevator. But it's a work in progress... let me know your thoughts and tell me what I've missed.

Richard's Web 2.0 Elevator Pitch

Web 2.0 at its most basic is using services on the Web. Some examples: Gmail for email, Flickr for photo-management, RSS for news delivery, eBay for shopping, Amazon for buying books. That's why the Web is being called a platform - because all of these services are being built and used on the Web. Why Web 2.0 only now though - hasn't Amazon been around since 1995? Why yes, but it's taken until 2005 for broadband and web technology to catch up and reach a 'tipping point' - the Web is fast becoming the platform of choice for developers, business, media, public services, and so on.

So what do I get out of this "Web 2.0", you ask? The advantages of using the Web as a platform is that the services become more social and collaborative - and geographic boundaries are blown away. A lot of the content is actually created by users. For example all of the reviews and ratings entered into Netflix by its users help make it easier to find and filter the thousands of DVDs that are available on its website. Another advantage of using the Web as a platform is that services can be built using data and code from other services - for example Housing Maps is a "mash-up" of Google Maps and real estate listings from craigslist. So Web 2.0 provides services that people can contribute to as well as mix and match.

Oh, I see you have to get out of the elevator now. Did I tell you I have a book coming out on Web 2.0? Wait a minute, I also have two blogs -- why are you running so fast? Hmmm, I guess I need to keep working on my definition :-)

Tim Bray dislikes the Web 2.0 meme, but mainly because it isn't technically version 2.0. With all due respect, this totally misses the point. Web 2.0 is about building new things on top of the Web - the 'Web as Platform' definition I wrote about recently.

It's an era of unprecedented construction on the Web and this has generated a lot of excitement and optimism. As Danny Ayers pointed out when he referenced Ian Davis' words: "Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology".

Web 2.0 is not necessarily version 2 of the Web. The "2.0" part just happens to be a witty software reference signifying that it's a new world of Web opportunity. As Tim O'Reilly said in his post responding to Bray's: "...there's something qualitatively different about today's web."

Tim O'Reilly summed it up:

"Web 2.0 is the era when people have come to realize that it's not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web. [...] The net has replaced the PC as the platform that matters, just as the PC replaced the mainframe and minicomputer."

So much is being built on top of this Web platform nowadays: new media such as blogging and podcasting, old media is moving to the Web, music (e.g. Webjay, iTunes), education, shopping (e.g. Amazon, eBay), marketing, banking, law, government - you name it, it's being built out on the Web.

I think Tom Foremski captured this point in his recent post, when he said:

"The new dotcoms are not technology companies, necessarily, but they are all "technology enabled" companies."

And that's what Web 2.0 means to me - everyday, non-technical people using Web technologies to enhance their own lives and businesses. The Web is an infrastructure, a foundation. What we create and build on the Web is what Web 2.0 is all about.

"I propose a goal: Make Web 2.0 the best possible commons for supporting free markets and free culture."

I'm glad Doc has weighed in on the ongoing debate about what Web 2.0 is. So far we've had mainly techies and business folks pecking away at the definition, but it hasn't really been approached from a 'social commons' point of view. And who better to do that than Doc Searls.

Doc wrote his post in response to one by Martin at Mediatope, who is creating a "a cumulative Web 2.0 definition" which he says is:

"Mainly based on the proto-definition work of richard mcmanus' writereadweb, still the most imprtant resource for Web 2.0. The wikipedia-entry is also valuable, despite being "disputed"."

Very nice of you to say so Martin, thank you!

btw the 'Web as platform' definition is a bit misunderstood, by some people who say - well, Web 1.0 was a platform too. So let me try and clarify a little. When I say Web 2.0 = 'Web as platform' - I'm referring to shared infrastructure and standards such as RSS, XML, API's, structured microcontent, read/write web tools like blogging and podcasting, web services, etc. None of that was around in a usable state in the first edition of the Web (in the 90's). You could put up a static or interactive website, do e-commerce transactions, participate in message boards and so forth. But you couldn't build on top of any of that... it wasn't a true platform. So when I use the word 'platform', I mean it must provide an infrastructure - and a network - for people to build on top of it. Build what? Communities, collaboration, communication, and (yes, don't forget) commerce.

Perhaps 'Web as OS' is a more accurate description, but I prefer to use the word 'platform' because it's not as techie and it can be expanded upon much better - e.g. as a business term, or to explain how for journalists the Web can be a platform for new news media. It's not as effective to say "the Web is an OS" to non-geeks...

Anyway, I'm very glad to see the definition of Web 2.0 being discussed openly and from all sorts of angles. The Wikipedia definition is still a (disputed) work in progress, but that's OK. This is what we have weblogs and wikis for - to thrash out concepts in public and build on them ;-)

"Every company, not just tech companies, needs to have a presence in the blogging world, someone whose feet are planted both in the network outside the organization as well as inside. [...] Only Microsoft and perhaps Yahoo have this. Even Google can't be accessed over the web, and definitely not Apple."

It's Monday morning as I write this and I've just had my coffee, so here are my notes on this matter. Microsoft and Yahoo both have a large presence in the blogosphere - indeed over the past year or so I've gotten to personally know many people from both companies. I have a particular affinity to Yahoo, perhaps because it's an excellent mix of New Media and Web Technology. Anyway, my point is that as I've gotten to know people from Yahoo and Microsoft, those companies have become much more 'human' to me. We have conversations on the Web and offline too. Everybody benefits in some way - e.g. they get ideas and feedback from their users, we get new products that better suit our needs. It's a very symbiotic relationship.

Compare that to Google. As of this date I don't know a single person from Google. I hope at least some of them read my blog, but not one has ever emailed me or commented on my blog or linked to me. Ordinarily I wouldn't expect any of those things, but when you consider how much attention (that word again) I've gotten from Yahoo and Microsoft people via my blog - well, one begins to wonder where all the Google bloggers are.

Maybe I can start the conversation with Google folks by extending a simple invitation - ping me at readwriteweb AT gmail.com (see I use your products!). Let me know what's happening inside Google, what you're thinking about. I'm sure we have a lot in common. Converse with me - and other bloggers like me. You may be surprised to find that we can help each other.

And lest I be seen to be picking on (or sucking up to) Google, I extend that invitation to ANY and ALL Web 2.0 companies. Join the blogosphere. Talk with your users, find out what makes us tick. Because it works both ways - we also find out what makes YOU tick and so we better understand each other.

Thus endth this sermon from The Father of Web 2.0.

"The Read/Write Web isn't just about being able to publish writing though, it is also about an increased ability for ordinary people to interact and transact with websites."

While researching something for a project I'm busy on currently, I came across a recent variation on this theme. Rummaging is a blog that is focused on the company eBay and the author made this excellent point:

"More and more, eBay is becoming a vehicle for people to express themselves about their relationships, their views about the world and all their hopes and fears.

[...]

Look at the international press attention gained by people selling their virginity, or a coke can, or an old wedding dress via an eBay auction. These people got to express themselves to a far wider audience than most can ever dream. Compare this to the criticism frequently levelled at weblogs: no-one reads them."

Note that I cut a few paragraphs to try and get to the essential point: which is that eBay, and other transactional community sites like it, is in a sense what the Read/Write Web means for the vast majority of people. Most people aren't bloggers - and probably never will be. But a huge number of people 'write' on interactive websites such as eBay (here in New Zealand the equivalent is TradeMe.co.nz, which gets as much attention in my country as eBay does in the US).

It's not just auction websites either - it can be any website that fosters a sense of community or interaction. And 'transactional' isn't necessarily about money.

As Rummaging concluded:

"eBay allows people their fifteen minutes in an explicitly transactional manner. In that, it epitomises the age."

Indeed it does - the age of the two-way, Read/Write Web.