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Web 2.0: Are we losing focus again?

Fred Oliveira on May 10, 2006

Every now and then around the blogosphere someone who’s trying to alert people to this new “era” we call Web 2.0 messes up and loses focus. Either by talking about things that are clearly lacking in innovation, or by talking things that are not “2.0″ at all.

The thing is we’ve all seen DHTML, we’ve all seen image generation with PHP, we’ve all seen a lot of stuff before the year 2000. We can’t keep calling every fancy thing that happens to be dynamic inside a browser a product of the “Web 2.0″. Mainly because it clearly isn’t one. But many do, many hype things that shouldn’t be hyped, or that clearly don’t deserve our attention right now - particularly in a time when we just don’t have any (time).

We’re losing focus on what’s important, again. The focus should be kept on user-centric applications, user-centric development and design and most importantly user-centric features. And if I’ve just repeated “user-centric” four times, that must mean something, right?

I thought we all had agreed, many months ago, that Web 2.0 was about people, not about news snippet generators or other randomly annoying flashes from the past. Innovation is key. Innovation, and the user. It still is, right?

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Ken

I agree that there’s a lot of hype over a lot of stuff that’s been around a long time, but I don’t mind that much. To me, as long as people are getting excited about web development they can use all the fancy names they want.

Bob Aman

The people losing focus are the pundits.

Supr.c.ilio.us: The Blog » Users are all Hype

[...] Fred over at WeBreakStuff says: We’re losing focus on what’s important, again. The focus should be kept on user-centric applications, user-centric development and design and most importantly user-centric features. And if I’ve just repeated “user-centric” four times, that must mean something, right? [...]

Rowan

Right! …but the term has been hijacked unwittingly by people who didn’t really understand that. And now Web 2.0 means “rounded corners” to more people than it does user-centric innovation. You are echoing thoughts I wrote down a few days ago here:
http://eurekaman.com/the-web-20-evolution

David Evans

Somewhat interesting commentary from a web2.0 workgroup blog but as happens with blogs, pointing out the obvious without diving into the details or providing a solution. First, there is no new era. Many people think web 2.0 started when people started running out of money and decided to re-read W3C standards, which are always good for a business idea or two. That is not a new era. Enablers such as faster computers and broadband penetration have a lot more to do with web2.0 than javascript. How come all the web2.0 companies I talk to are totally broke and don’t have a decent business model? What makes this a new era? I think part of the problem is this “we” you mention. The group of “we” is a few hundred people, all but invisible to the world, the people behind the curtain. I built my first commercial website in 1994, for some perspective, and no, I’m not just bitching but really, this “we” needs to hear some perspective. I agree with Ken, the excitement palpable last year, for a short time. The media is latching on to it a year later, which is how it will always be. Let’s talk about innovation, what do you consider the most important thing that needs to happen in the web2.0 space?

Fred

David, you hit the nail in the head when you say the the people preaching need to open their eyes and realize what’s really valuable. That’s something I’ve been saying for a while (and ultimately what I meant in the post with hyping the wrong things).

The most innovative thing happening recently, technology-wise, is server-push asynchronous communication (what some people have already been hyping as the cool side of ajax). Socially wise, I still think the way to address the user and not necessarily a business is an “innovative” way to think.

Great comments, guys. Thank you.

RC Mullins

Very well put. If I could offer in addition that as Web 2.0 becomes more and more defined, it becomes more inflexible. It seems that the power of Web 2.0 comes from its broadness, it’s depth and the difficulty that exists in trying to put it into a box and categorize it.

Another things is obvious misconceptions about what Web 2.0 actually is. For a long time, I was under the impression that Web 2.0 offerings were ‘open-source’. Now that it seems to be moving towards enterprise, and proprietary ‘for money’ offerings, I find myself becomeing resistant a little about a company (particularly Microsoft) calling their offerings ‘Web 2.0′. Now that is a problem on my part and it will take a little time for me to get past the fact/impression that ‘just because you have to pay for it doesn’t make it bad. That is just the nature of new ideas.

John Paul Micek

Yes, Web 2.0 and the New Media are steadily gain ground on ‘application-based approaches’ and the ancient mainstream media. But from a marketing standpoint, there’s still something to be said about psychological triggers from the “old world.” For example, anyone over the age of 25 has built into their subconscious a visual trigger of trust (right or wrong) related to the old media when they see a newspaper clipping.

It is true when you say that “… Web 2.0 is about people, not about news snippet generators or other randomly annoying flashes from the past.” But to ignore the necessary psychological and sociological bridges to the old world that create buying triggers is marketing suicide.

Labnotes » Blog Archive » links for 2006-05-11

[...] WeBreakStuff » Web 2.0: Are we losing focus again? “We’re losing focus on what’s important, again. The focus should be kept on user-centric applications, user-centric development and design and most importantly user-centric features. And if I’ve just repeated “user-centric” four times, that must [...]

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