Nick's Blog

During discussions over an RFP response earlier in the week, the topic of Web 2.0 came up, this lead to a number of emails going back and forth around what this mystery term refered to and what it means for Intergen and our customers. JD has posted an entry and it has recieved a number of comments and it seems that the discussion is set to continue for some time.

My initial conclusions are that web 2.0 is, well… nothing in particular, at least at the moment. There seems to be no real definition for the term, some people are referring to it as a technology set, others are inclined to suggest it is something more, a general feeling or change in direction in the way people use the web.

The latter suggestion seems to be the best fit, the way people use the web has changed. Previously the web has been made up of websites consisting of mostly static content, web site users were very much consumers of information. With the change in technologies and a greater emphasis on web applications as opposed to websites, the web has made a shift to a collaborative approach to content. The ability for the web to be interactive is nothing new, the ability for users to post information via a web page has been around for many years, however people are now encouraged to post information back to website owners for more then just website feedback. Take a look at the phenomenon of blog’s, really a blog is nothing more then a personal web page of the past, however the way the content is written and the way it is presented is specifically designed to encouraging discussion and comment. Websites such as Wikipedia rely on input from anonymous users, and many other sites such as Trademe and eBay rely on a community approach, where the website would not exist without the input from the end user.

The concept of a Web version 2.0 is in itself frustrating as it implies that a distinct change from version 1, the web hasn’t changed versions, it has merely progressed and matured. I can see that Web 2.0 as a catch phrase is going to haunt us for sometime so it is definitely something we need to embrace, whether it relates to technologies, content collaboration or something else. I expect that in the next few months a number of clients will want us to web 2.0 enable their sites, however, until we can come up with a tangible definition we should continue to focus on delivering quality, content focused sites. Especially when it comes to government departments additional features such as blogging, while important, are still secondary to providing information to the public.

Posted by Nick on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 6:58 am.