Is WEB2.0 Dead?

Tim O'Reilly's WEB 2.0 meme map

Tim O'Reilly, the technical book publisher (see O'Reilly), introduced the term WEB2.0 (Web two point oh). O'Reilly, a sensitive trend observer, was a veteran technology writer and publisher. With his wide range of contacts and constant contact, O'Reilly was told time and time again about the shift in how the internet (at the time web, short for World Wide Web, WWW) was being used. The technical people were becoming less crucial and the users were starting to take over. What he saw as a pattern was the sites with "user contributed content". The kind of content not created by the site designers, but by the people using the site.

It turns out that WEB2.0 was not one of the earliest observations of user contributed content by a technologist. WikiPedia is a good example of a project almost entirely user contributed. Years before these two, Phil Greenspun from MIT was a pioneer with the idea of building sites with user contributed content. His Photo.Net site was the first popular site with a deep niche targeting: serious amateur photographers. In the early internet days, before popular blog platform were available, Greenspun built his own platform and published a pioneering book: "Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing" which he also gave away for free on his site (notice the publication date: September 1998, that's 14 years ago!)

It may turn out to be just an historical footnote. "WEB2.0" essentially became a term used by technologists for a short time. Eventually, when what O'Reilly described became a mainstream technique, most of the world just thought of it as a change in how the internet is used. Today, most business mangers could not explain and show the use of the term. Yet, if you want to understand the changes in internet use, and then apply them to your own world (and continue to develop new opportunities) knowing what people defined and observed may be very useful. Good luck with your "user contributed content site / WEB2.0"