Misconceptions on Web 2.0
Image source: Tim Oreilly’s Web 2.0 explanation
In part with my continuing effort to explain Web 2.0 to my non-g33ky friends (or my own dad for the matter) outside my office space (when you are with the unavoidable question “So what do you do these days?” in lunch catchups or any social events), I have been trying to seek a one-liner explanation that can cover all of Web 2.0. It’s similar to developing a sales pitch to pitch to a venture capitalist that Web 2.0 is cool and will bring you money. This is the hard part.
A lot of the queries eventually turns to “So what language does Web 2.0 uses? ” I can sense the first misconception the general public has about Web 2.0 is the technology. Most people not working in the knowledge space associate every buzzword in IT with some big technology. The implementation part of IT is technology, but Web 2.0 comes in at the strategic part of IT, where companies try to seek new methodologies to position themselves in the market. Tim Oreilly couldn’t have had it more accurate on what Web 2.0 is. The association of technology is understandable in this case. Nevertheless, a direct association is fallible. Technologies are merely tools to implement the principles of Web 2.0. Did I just mention principles???
YES, Web 2.0 is nothing but a set of principles that is still debatable by a number of industry hot heads till today. [PERIOD]
Being as technologically agnostic as I am, the technology to implement Web 2.0 principles are open-ended. My personal preference is to leverage light-weight languages such as Ruby on Rails or PHP, but to fully integrate with a corporate legacy systems, I would imagine using Enterprise frameworks such as J2EE or .NET.
In short, Web 2.0 comes in as a potential business proposition to businesses on how they can leverage the principle, coupled with others such as SOA or Google Enterprise Search to revamp the corporate IT ecosystem to drive up shareholder’s value in the market. The technology part of it is pretty open-ended and the selection of it pretty much depends on a range of risk/feasibility studies associated with it to best suit the corporation.
So there you have it.
- Web 2.0 == Strategy phase (leveraging Web 2.0 philosophy)
- Java/Ruby/.NET and etc == Implementation phase (implementing Web 2.0 philosophy)
Feel free to comment on any “misconceptions” I have given in this post.
Hey Michael,
Good point man. Web 2.0 is definitely more about culture and philosophy than technology. Sounds like a renaissance.