Week 5 Activity 3 - Web 2.0

O’Reilly, T. (2005) What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software [online]. www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 accessed 11 March 2009
1. What is Web 2.0?
My own definition of Web 2.0 would have been - web sites that allow full scale interaction between websites and users. Sharing knowledge and information, easier communication routes, everything held online, accessibility, everyone inputting in knowledge.
O’Reilly’s paper states that it is:
· Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary
· Google is a good example of web 2.0 – open source, continuous updates, no downloads, users contribute to applications.
· Web 2.0 sites are about database management Eg Google is not the database, it is the database manager between the surfer and the sources of information.
· Web 2.0 sites are Customer service focused reaching out to everyone
· The service gets better the more people who use it
· Architecture of participation – built in ethic of co-operation
· Harness collective intelligence
· Critical mass
· Users participate in website e.g. Amazon reviews, most popular searches based on activity
· Entries can be made by any user (wikis)
· Social bookmarking
· Folksonomy – collaborative tagging. Allows for overlapping associations instead of rigid categories, in the same way that the brain works
· Viral Marketing drives usage of web 2.0 sites.
· RSS – allows users to subscribe to a page and receive notification when it’s updated
· Peer-to-peer feedback (blogs, trackbacks – when you can see who has linked to your blog)
· Web 2.0 is a service not a product
· Users must be treated as co-developers

Reading other references to O’Reilly I think the key to Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence and the idea of open access to information including concepts such as one ID.

See: O’Reilly, T. (2007) Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again http://comparative.edu.ru:9080/PortalWeb/document/show.action?document.id=16311

2. How would you compare the technological environment described by O’Reilly with the technological conditions at the time of McLuhan’s writing in Activity 2?

McLuhan talks of TV as a way for audiences to participate in sport, for example or a talk show. I think the TV is still very closely relevant to the acquisition metaphor and that web 2.0 brings us closer to the participation metaphor of learning. TV really, at the end of the day, is passive. You can interact with the programmes but this is delayed, could be rigged and also influenced by what you see. Web 2.0 allows COLLABORATION. You can enter into dialogue with peers in Web 2.0 which you can’t do in TV in the same way. So in terms of web 2.0 and the participation metaphor, and from what I may have learnt on the forums, participation is this context is a true 2-way process.

Web 2.0 then is about widespread collaboration, rather than participation as I interpret these words.
“A more sound business model gives users what they want and make it more sustainable, e.g., Google, eBay and Amazon. But Web 2.0 is also collaborative, e.g., blogging, wikis and Wikipedia, Flickr, and Craig’s List. It has been advocated that this “mass collaboration” augments collection and expansion of human knowledge in ways not previously possible (Tapscott and Williams, 2006).” Taken from Hersh, W.R. (2008) Information Retrieval: A health and biomedical perspective, Springer:. Ebook: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H3f9xsW0a_8C

Miller (2005) helps define the principles of web 2.0:
Web 2.0:
· Freeing of data, allowing it to be discovered, manipulated for different applications than its original intention
· Permits building virtual applications – small, rapid to deploy e.g. Google Maps and its API for using in other websites.
· Is participative – the value of user generated content
· Applications work for the user, able to locate and assemble content to meet our needs
· applications are modular – pick and choose what components you want
· is about sharing – code, content and ideas.
· About communication and facilitating community
· is about remix - we can just go to what we want, make it part of other things we want (e.g. I-Google)
· is smart - applications can use their knowledge of us to meet our needs e.g. Amazon recommendations.
· opens the “long tail” making it increasingly cost effective to service the interests of small groups. (The long tail is, according to Wikipedia, a noun coined in 2004 to describe a niche strategy of business such as Amazon to sell a large number of items in relatively small quantities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
· is built on trust
Miller, P. (2005) Web 2.0: Building the New Library in ARIADNE Issue 45 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/miller/

3. What might be the impact of the web in its 2.0 form if “the medium is the message”.
The medium of web 2.0 is essentially about collaboration, so representing knowledge in a Web 2.0 environment where anyone can contribute and discuss it, means that we are learning by the participation metaphor.