Web 2.0 is all about right mix of services
Written by Admin on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Web 2.0 is all about right mix of services
For demo purposes only, pop over to http://www.housingmaps.com. This is an example of joining together two services, i.e. mapping via Google maps and a database of houses for sale via Craiglist.
I chose this site because there is no business model associated with it as yet. This is an example of the Web 2.0 principle of innovation by assembly. Joining some services together to provide a model than can then is perhaps leveraged for a new business model.
In the case above you could encourage sellers for a small fee to add personal details. You could also allow others to upload their purchasing experiences from different sellers and then problems or benefits of a given area like trans- portation, services like shops and so on.
As these commodity components become more available then there are more possibilities when it comes to connecting different pieces together. This is a little like building your own PC instead of buying a brand name one, i.e. you get to chose which pieces are in the final machine. It also gave rise to companies like Gateway and Dell who do just that kind of thing. The future of the Web 2.0 world could be a Gateway-like approach to online services.
Another Web 2.0 principle that is probably quite obvious these days is that it is not limited to a Windows PC platform, i.e. it is software above the level of a single device. Microsoft’s .NET platform for example is based on this approach. Write your code on one machine and run it on another, as long as the intermediate code interpreters have been build for that target machine of course.
iTunes, not my favourite application, is a good example of this. Starting with a handheld device you can reach out to a huge server and database of songs with your PC or Mac acting as the local cache point. Others had tried to get this working but to date iTunes does it best, as it is designed. I still prefer the copy and paste approach.
Systems like iTunes and TiVo give us examples of the core principles of Web 2.0. They are not web applications as such but use the Web and web platforms as their base. This makes the Web component all but invisible in the process. The core functionality is the data management. So iTunes is a service built on a database and the Web. Of course in the case of iTunes it can also be used as a local application.
The collective intelligence aspect of Web 2.0 is not well represented by iTunes or TiVo because their experiments in this area have been at odds with the IP lobby’s. The architecture participation in say iTunes has been limited though podcasting did start to change that equation somewhat.
I would expect that as more and more devices are connected to a service the more Web 2.0 facets should start to appear. If the mobile phone is not only using data but providing it then we have a Web 2.0 ideal. If you can be giving real time traffic patterns to others then this is what the technology is all about.
There are also negative sides of this equation. A few minutes before a mob forms or a street race starts everyone in the group gets the word. At the same time, attendees could also be reporting on the process and providing real time reports that could be used to catch offenders. There have been many criminals caught when their exploits had been posted on MySpace for example.
With any technology there will be positive and negative uses. The Web 2.0 approach is participation based, and not limited to a single machine type. If you want to build a business model on top of this, it’s a matter of picking the right mix and making something of it.
Email: jclhein@gmail.com
