Five by Five

written by Steve Sponder, Managing Director of Five by Five

If you keep your ear to the blogosphere you’ll know that Web 2.0 has been getting a lot of coverage recently. But how important is Web 2.0? Is it the beginning of a new era in which the true value of the Internet will be realised. Or is it just the latest buzzword?

In fact, what is Web 2.0? Well, don’t worry, you’re not going to need new hardware. Web 2.0 is, in essence, a movement. Dale Dougherty coined the term in October 2004 at a conference brainstorming session, after realising similar attributes could be found in a broad range of successful web sites.

Let’s examine the three most important attributes:

1. Participation

Sites that allow user participation have been referred to as ‘social software’. In addition to consumer generated media - blogs, podcasts, wikis etc - participation can also take the form of tagging. Tags add meaning and context to data, and through a process known as folksonomy, web communities freely allocate tags, creating a familiar, shared vocabulary.

With data tagged, features such as ‘people who liked this also liked…’ can be provided. What’s more, the users collaboratively control what content is the most important or popular – this is known as an emergent system.

Go play > www.Flickr.com for images; http://del.icio.us for bookmarks; www.digg.com for news; www.rollyo.com for search. Or see the most popular from various social software sites at www.popurls.com

2. Standardisation & Remixability

The Semantic Web, a project led by W3C, aims to create universal standards for exchanging data. These standards allow data to be quickly and easily shared across the web. With content assigned metadata and easily exchangeable via openAPIs, site builders are getting really creative with the way in which they’re fusing content from multiple sources.

Go play > www.housingmaps.com for remixed data from Craigslist and Google Maps; www.bigblogzoo.com for a semantic web browser; try a little remixing of your own at www.netvibes.com or www.pageflakes.com for customised start pages; www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm for visual representation of Google news; search for flickr images by painting http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/

3. The Long Tail

Online stores like Amazon and Napster offer massive choice, and shoppers can delve deep into vast, virtual storerooms containing product ranges simply not available on the high street. And with a sprinkling of user comments and ‘people who liked this also liked…’ features designed to put relevant products in front of shoppers, users are encouraged to broaden their spending horizons. The result is the Long Tail effect – a more even spend across many niche products.

Go play > www.liveplasma.com and www.pandora.com - both suggest new music based on your current tastes.

Further attributes of Web 2.0 include usability, decentralisation and convergence and the perpetual beta. If you’re interesting in finding out more, take a look at some of these sites:

www.esnips.com – store web pages, links, files and screen grabs
www.evoca.com – create, organise, share and search voice recordings
www.youtube.com – everyone can now have their 15 minutes of fame!
www.meebo.com – instant messaging via a web browser

To contact Steve click here >>

taken from the Prelaunch Edition of the Five by Five Review, Summer 2006