Web 2.0 itself is a term that I find fault with. Its far too broad and too nebulous. It reminds me of back when the .NET Framework 1.0 was coming out, and Microsoft was stamping
everything with the .NET label. They were calling all their back end servers the .NET Server Family, there was a certification program where you could ".NET Certify" your application (which really meant that your app consumed one of the core server family products) ... and there was the .NET Framework itself. The end result was that so many completely unrelated things carried the .NET label that the .NET label itself lost its potency. It didn't really mean
anything.
I think the same thing is happening with Web 2.0. To me, it feels kind of like a nebulous buzzword, some kind of marketing nonsense that a used car salesman might spew at me in an attempt to keep me from leaving the lot. This is really a shame, because the entire concept of a user-driven web, social software, social networking, and unparalleled online User Experience is a
really good concept. The problem is that the essential core concept is being watered down by thousands of people just popping up out of nowhere with "me too" products trying to ride the coattails of some of the few who have been truly successful in this niche.
Take
del.icio.us for example. They are wildly successful. Now... how many other Web 2.0 sites have popped up that end in
io.us or some variation of that them? Too many to count. Just the other day I noticed a new site,
stu.dicio.us. To be honest, once I looked at the home page, I had
absolutely no desire to go any further. I could tell within a short glance that it was going to be just another solution without a problem. Regardless of whether its a good product, I think they should have put in just a
little bit of effort when coming up with a name. The obvious attempt to ride the wave of enthusiasm that surrounds delicious was a negative strike against them for me. When was the last time you were in a class and you thought,
"Wow, I really wish I could take these hand-written notes from my class, go home, go online, and then manually type them into some website that requires all of my notes to be completely public". Probably never. People who transcribe class notes are either going to use something rich and full-featured like Word, or if they are hard-core note takers they will already have a Tablet or a UMPC - completely negating the need for a system like stu.dicio.us. The community won't benefit from the notes because there isn't enough hard categorization of the data - its all free-form notes that belong to free-form class names. So, if I wanted to see someone's remedial chemistry notes, I'd have to hope that they called their class remedial chemistry... not "remchem 102" or "rchem102".
I mean no disrespect to the folks at
stu.dicio.us, it takes a lot of time, effort, and courage to come up with these applications. The problem I have is that I am seeing a trend where individuals and companies are so focused on getting their footprint in the concrete before it dries that they don't stop to think about what they're doing. So many sites seem to have been published without a clear purpose, without an analysis of their target audience or without even knowing who their target audience is (again, I'm generalizing, not speaking specifically about stu.dicio.us).
The way it looks to me right now is that we're standing at the edge of an ocean. Tons of fly-by-night sites, applications, and ideas are bubbling to the surface like so much flotsam. There's a couple big cruiseliners out there like
Digg and
del.icio.us and
Technorati: people with clear vision, goals, and the resources to put them into action. What I think we're all waiting for is something to show up that isn't driftwood, and something that's even more than a cruiseliner... a hovercraft or a plane or something we've never heard of or seen before. I can't remember the last time there was such a huge outpouring of enthusiasm and innovation for a new idea like Web 2.0. I think people are scared. They know they want to innovate and come up with something new and fantastic... but since they don't have that
killer idea right now, they decide to throw out something, toss a bone into the pack of dogs... see what happens while they try and come up with a real idea. That attitude is littering the Web 2.0 landscape with detritus that might make it harder to attract users to Web 2.0-type sites and collaborative activities.
tags: web20 socialsoftware
links: digg this del.icio.us technorati reddit
