Tuesday, 6th of November 2007 at 08:24:10 AMJuliet:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Recently, Kleiner Pekins Caufield Byers noted to the Silicon Valley Watcher that “we have absolutely no interest in funding Web 2.0 companies.” According to this report, KP felt that Web 2.0 had lost is cache and now has developed a negative connotation.
In response to this piece, Tim O’Reilly, noted supporter of the open source movement and the person associated with coining the phrase Web 2.0, made note the likelihood that most “Web 2.0″ companies were not in fact Web 2.0 and were just cashing in on buzzwords:
“But I think the real way to interpret this comment is to say that if a company needs to identify itself as a “Web 2.0″ company rather than describing the problem they are solving, or the opportunity they are creating, then they are just playing the buzzword game, and aren’t worth investing in, regardless of the buzzword!”
Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword: it is a dynamic change in the way we use the Internet to collaborate, communicate and connect as individuals and groups. This being said, I agree that the term is way overused, almost as much as “social media”.
How do you feel about this? Let’s start a conversation about Web 2.0 and what it means to you. I want to hear your thoughts.
UPDATE: For those of you who are looking for some background on Web 2.0, here is “the article” from O’Reilly himself.
Honestly – I think this “announcement” is REALLY late. I sent Web 2.0 to Buzzword Hell over a year ago. It’s about time that the VC’s caught up.
Now – as far as Social Media goes – I think that’s an entirely different subject. Social Media is a discipline – Web 2.0 was a buzzword. Social Media has real legs – and real advantages to companies who employ it correctly. There are rules and strategies – and Social Media has shown tremendous returns for companies big and small.
I’d wager that in 5 years Social Media will be one of the only ways companies still advertise – whether it’s called Social Media – Conversational Marketing – or Community Marketing – this is the future of Marketing and Advertising – and you can quote me on that.
It figures that when I finally start to figure out what Web 2.0 is, its no longer cool. Actually, I find that most of my non high tech clients still have no clue what Web 2.0 is. I completely agree with Tim O’Reilly – clients really only care about getting a good solution to their problems that is readily available when they need it. One thing that has always made me a little nervous about web 2.0 is offline access – some of us can’t be online all of the time. Perhaps that will change with advances in technology, but for now I think it is still a significant factor. That’s just my non high tech two cents.
My impression is that industry leaders/insiders are beginning to suffer from social median/Web 2.0 fatigue a lot sooner than the public as a whole. As a member of the industry, you are forced to hear 50,000 pitches as to why this company or that company is the next great thing, but only a select number actually reach the public in any meaningful way. Therefore, the public hasn’t become nearly as overwhelmed. I think the net affect will be a trimming of the fat to only those startups with solid value propositions beyond a neat little widget or two.
@Brent – Nice! I definitely agree with you – it still amazes me the number of people I still come across everyday who have never heard of such mainstream “Web 2.0″ services as Flickr or YouTube. When it comes to “Web 2.0″ – I really prefer the term “Participatory Web”. What do you guys prefer?
As a person who works in digital advertising and marketing, I am totally against using a term like Web 2.0 to define a shift in user experience on the web. There is nothing worse than hearing a client ask “is this approach Web 2.0 enough?”. I reply by asking a fundamental question. Will the components they see as Web 2.0 add value or benefit the project? I’d be hesitant to work with an agency who hangs their business hat on Web 2.0. What happens to their business model when “Semantic Web” roles in. That’s right, a new term for the next web shift…except this one is a funational term and not a buzzword created by Mr. O’Reilly.
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IMHO, Web 2.0 was doomed to be relegated to buzzword status just like any term that tries to define a complex idea in < 3 syllables. A couple of thoughts:
1) The guy from KPCB who made the quote was likely trying to be cutesy and get a headline when in reality, any VC firm will invest in a business that has home run potential. Since Web 2.0 was new and innovative, it was reasonable to assume that it would garner a significant amount of VC attention because the opportunity to dominate a market usually comes with early adopters and first movers.
2) Speaking specifically to the idea of Web 2.0, in reality, Web 1.0 was about the same thing: connections. The current models out there are more collaborative and utilitarian than their predecessors, but still driving towards the same ultimate goals of improved connections for more efficiency and productivity. All systems evolve in that direction and the Internet is not breaking any ground there. If termites and ants can do it, I see no reason why humans cannot replicate those same systems for us using technology.
3) @ericaogrady, I will take the over on your 5 year prediction about “Social Media will be one of the only ways companies still advertise” (I am not sure if your statement will not always be true…that’s what a semester of logic will get you). I assume you are saying that it will be the primary way companies advertise and I will address that statement. Whereas I agree with your convictions about the value conversational marketing has to organizations and consumers, I have been around the sun enough times (thanks for the phrase that pays, Lenny) to know that adoption of social media will not be as rapid as you would hope. Just to provide a base of reference that our local Houston readers can appreciate, many oil and gas companies still operate with fax copies of paper reports for logging time sensitive activities. Besides, I don’t see Darque Tan reducing its billboard inventory anytime soon. Frankly, RSS which has the best chance still only has a 3% penetration rate in the market.
Web 2.0 is definitely a buzzword. After reading O’Reilly’s definitions, I still don’t see the differentiator between it and “Web 1.0″. Actually, there’s always been competing strands in computing, going all the way back to contrasts between the AI folks and Douglas Engelbart’s group, from the mid-1960s.
Even “participatory web” was alive shortly thereafter, on the early Arpanet. We had file and code sharing (FTP), web presence (finger), and discussion forums (Usenet). Perhaps one difference now is that — finally — content creation is much easier on the web, and doesn’t require an advanced degree in SGML – which, oh wait, was the origins of semantic web as well!
So, it’s not like we’re seeing a new software release here, with 2.0 features. Yet, a lot of the new sites and applications are certainly more fun, cooler looking, and easier to deal with than their predecessors. As for an organizational-mindshift, I think companies need to embrace more the participatory and conversational aspects of the web, so certainly this strand of applications are going to gain in prominence. Brochure-ware is dead.