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April 30, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 - Stowe Boyd on Web 2.0
Stowe Boyd is taking the stage on Web 2.0. He describes it as a very important revolution in the space of social apps that is itself transformative. He says that taking up blogging towers over everything else he has ever done in his career. It trumps his getting a degree in computer science, or all the years of working for large corporations. Being part of a large global network has been personally transformative for him.
Stowe talks about social applications as being one of the most important things in industry.
Innovation as iteration is the subject now. Innovation isn’t always something you plan in advance, and sometimes you don’t know where you’re going. I take it that he describes Web 2.0 as a place that is inherently innovative.
Web 2.0 - He says there’s a lot of controversy around whether the term itself fits. He says yes, and that Web 2.0 is also viewed as a collection of metaphors, like “Web as Platform;” “Social Web;” “Open;” “Bottom-up;” “Simple; Focused Apps;” and “Open Source Technologies.” All these apply.
It is also a collection of technologies, like LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP); RSS (Really Simple Syndication), XML, AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), Ruby on Rails, etc. [This is indeed another universe with a language all its own. I’m wondering how I might explain some of this to my mom…]
With the surging proliferation of Web 2.0 companies, some of which already don’t exist since Stowe made the slide, he says that people are asking if this is another dot-com bubble. Stowe says, no, because the economics, technologies, players, and their goals, are different than the late 1990s.
So far I’m still trying to capture the specific business economics. He’s talking about Web 2.0 technologies being very inexpensive, and in some cases, are free. Revenue is mostly through advertising. Then there’s the notion of the term, “Freemium,” whereby there is a limited amount of access to content and functionality for free, and above that, the user pays a premium. I’m stunned that Stowe is describing a recent Web 2.0 conference that was attended by 3,000 people, with another 4,000 going through the expo. Observation: It’s becoming mainstream.
Social networking means … me first. The individual is the new group: my passions, my people, my markets. Stowe is saying that in this new world, he learns about tech trends for example, by his social network connections, through the internet, and not through large media outlets.
Next is the notion of the “Buddylist” being the Center of the Universe. “I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections.” (I am reminded of an adage I once heard from Prof. Rick Jarow of Vasser College, where he said (on creating community) that another word for a “community” is - a “market.”)
Web 2.0 is the world that blogs built; also, the blogosphere is doubling every 5 or 6 months, and that it is a worldwide phenomenon. Stowe says regardless of the number of readers that a given blog has (number of readers), that it still has value simply because of the [social aspect of its existence.]
Blogs and craigslist represents a 1-2 knockout punch to conventional media. Example: craigslist.com has been “credited” with knocking 37 percent off of classified advertising in the San Fransisco - Bay area.
Conversation flows through networks; media holds the pieces but not the content, and to understand what is going on, you have to be “in the flow.” [I am reminded of an article that I once wrote entitled “A Global Digital Nervous System.” I referred to some of Peter Russell’s ideas on Gaia theory originally advanced by NASA’s James Lovelock. For the complete text – click here.]
I'm really looking forward to the panel discussion to follow. Much about Web 2.0 is sure to come from this impressive list of experts, including Sylvia Marino (edmunds.com), Andrew McAfee (Harvard Business School), JP Rangaswami (BT Global Services) and the inimitable Ed Yourdon. For Ed's observations and keynotes etc. on Web 2.0, go to his blog here.
Posted by Mike at April 30, 2007 3:02 PM
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