Nick Carr has a biting post on Facebook's search for monetization. According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the future of Facebook may well be to monetize social interactions. I can't wait. What could be better than to have my interactions with "friends" I can't be bothered to hang out with in real life bought and sold?
Nick writes:
I like the way that Zuckerberg considers "media" and "advertising" to be synonymous. It cuts through the bull[potty]. It simplifies. Get over your MSM hangups, granddads. Editorial is advertorial. The medium is the message from our sponsor.
Marketing is conversational, says Zuckerberg, and advertising is social. There is no intimacy that is not a branding opportunity, no friendship that can't be monetized, no kiss that doesn't carry an exchange of value....The social graph, it turns out, is a platform for social graft....
Facebook, which distinguished itself by being the anti-MySpace, is now determined to out-MySpace MySpace. It's a nifty system: First you get your users to entrust their personal data to you, and then you not only sell that data to advertisers but you get the users to be the vector for the ads. And what do the users get in return? An animated Sprite Sips character to interact with.
Surely there's more to Web 2.0 than whoring social data for profit. Right?
Right???
A small plea to Web 2.0 wannabes: please find some other way to make money than to shove ads down my throat. I've got Adblock Plus. I don't see them, anyway, and I don't want invasive forms of advertising to take over standard advertising.
By Matt Assay
Source: http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9812701-16.html
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Beyond Web 2.0: The social web or the semantic web ?
Synopsis:
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of Web20. The full impact of Web 20 itself has yet to be felt because Web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.
Introduction
It seems ironic to talk about ‘beyond Web 2.0’ almost a week away from the Berlin Web 2.0 expo (where I am speaking).
Extending the ‘2.0’ numbering notation, we could naturally think of Web 3.0.
Much has been already said about Web 3.0 – most of it self serving.
Nova Spivack and Jason Calacanis have each attempted to define Web 3.0 corresponding to their respective companies (Radar networks and Mahalo)
In a world of hyper connectivity and information sharing – such definitions don’t go very far because of their inherent limitations based on their proponent’s businesses. So, I won’t go into those in detail. You can read more about these definitions HERE
Even Tim Berners shrugs at the term Web 2.0 but ironically does not hesitate in attempting to speak of Web 3.0 as a form of Semantic web. Of course, the semantic web is defined in an article from Tim Berners Lee himself as early as 2001 in the Scientific American magazine (The Semantic Web A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila)
But to understand ‘beyond Web 2.0’ – we have to appreciate a bit about why Web 2.0 took off as much as it did .. and why so many people did(do!) not get it.
Social software and social computing
In defining the Web 2.0 paradigm, Tim O Reilly’s genius lies in taking computing along the social domain and in laying the intellectual foundations of a new class of software i.e. social software.
Even before the seven principles of Web 2.0 were postulated by Tim O Reilly, we intuitively accepted the social aspects of the Web(for example Wikis existed before that time and were created by Ward Cunningham). However, Web 2.0 brought all these ideas together and provided us a common lexicon / framework to discuss these terms
Critically, Web 2.0 comes under the umbrella of social computing/social software. The term Social software is normally applied to a range of web-enabled software programs that allow users to interact, share, and meet other users. (Adapted from wikipedia definition of social software)
One might view ‘social software’ as a contradiction in terms. Traditionally software is almost ‘antisocial’ (i.e. logical – with little or no human interaction)
Consequently, many people from a programming background find the idea of social software as ‘marketing driven hype’. And some from marketing – do indeed hype it as the next big thing.
However, that should not take us away from the basic merits of the Web 2.0 definition as defined by the seven principles of Web 2.0 and a new class of software that is underpinned by Web 2.0 principles like harnessing collective intelligence, the web as a platform and so on.
Beyond Web 2.0
If we recap the title of Tim Berners Lee’s article on the semantic web, it says : A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers
So, to me; it is all about meaningful to computers(semantic web)? OR meaningful to people(social software/social web)
Of course, they are not mutually exclusive .. hence they will coexist – but the emphasis on each is important. The semantic web is oriented to a new form for content that makes sense to machines. The social web(which includes Web 2.0 ) relates to web enabled software that facilitates communication between people.
The paths of machines and men .. are both divergent and coexisting.
So, let’s start with the machines(the semantic web)
The semantic Web
The end goal of the semantic web is to extract meaning from data. Hence, content should be machine readable, machine interpretable(the computer must make sense of it) and machine actionable. In its ultimate incarnation, it leads to the rarified world of science fiction bots negotiating deals on behalf of their creators.
How practical is all this?
Not very – in my view.
Avatars and bots aside, the more basic question is: Who will add the semantics(structure) to the semantic web?
The semantic web needs someone to do the semantics before it becomes truly useful. This is a chicken and egg situation – to make the semantic web useful, you need content to be tagged – but who would tag the content in the first place(and why)?
Semantics for a specific vertical are relatively easy. Semantics for 'Joe public'(consumers) are another matter entirely.
And to be really useful; the semantics must be for all .. And this is where almost all efforts led by specific companies may fail because the web cannot be expected to cede control to a company - it must be an open standard. And even if islands of semantics evolve(one for pharmaceuticals, one for automotive and so on), they may be just that - islands ... Islands of semantic content are useful – but do not translate into a semantic web.
Ironically, the best solution to the semantic web ‘chicken and egg’ problem(aka who will create the semantics for the semantic web) comes from Web 2.0(social web). Web 2.0 ‘works’ because it solves this very fundamental chicken and egg problem by getting the users to do the semantics in return for some benefits(storing and sharing pictures for example as in flickr). Thus, it provides a ‘lite’ solution to the semantic web problem.
This illustrates the limitations of taking a software only approach of the semantic web. If you ignore the social aspects of the Web, then software can take you only so far ..
Web 2.0
Before we proceed with this section, A quick note: I do not consider either Mobile Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 as ‘beyond’ Web 2.0 because they are sub memes of Web 2.0 i.e. extend the basic idea of Web 2.0 along specific dimensions.
Unlike the semantic Web, Web 2.0 addresses a completely different problem domain – that of social computing.
Thus, if we consider web 20 as primarily a manifestation of the social web, then it follows that the idea of 'beyond web 20' has to address the evolution of the social web (and not the semantic web)
In my view, the two Web 2.0 concepts that pertain to the evolution of the social web are
a) Social network as a 'meta/umbrella' layer above the personal, enterprise and the mobile web
And
b) Cloud computing
The full impact of both is yet to be felt.
The first is a relatively simple idea – but very disruptive ..
It can be summarised as ‘facebook(or similar) as your primary interface to the Web’.
The idea is - we "log in' to a single profile on our social network. The resultant social network then becomes an ‘umbrella’ network encompassing your Web, Mobile Web and even the Enterprise Web. The concept of umbrella social networks becomes even more powerful when presence is added to the mix.
This is a concern to many including Google. Many people no longer use email because email is replaced by facebook messages. If your entire web experience is replaced by facebook and the advertising for facebook is exclusively from Microsoft .. this is clearly a threat for Google(and a master move on behalf of Microsoft). So, already we are seeing some moves in this direction – and one can expect some response from Google to this.
(Note: I can't find the reference but JP Rangaswami had spoken of a similar idea – which I call ‘umbrella social networks’ - in one of his blogs. If I find the blog, I shall link it.)
To really work, this idea needs a fine grained privacy control and an open social network. But it is not so strange to think that our entire web experience may be driven from a facebook(or similar) profile. Facebook is already courting the enterprise
Also, in the article 15 reasons Facebook may be worth $15bn, here are some insights ..
>>>
7. Facebook is the new web: The decision to open up the network to outside developers turned Facebook into a destination for many uses, like messaging, photos and video. Of course, as Facebook is on the web it could never really be the new web.
11. Facebook messaging is the new e-mail. Everyone feels stressed from a deluge of e-mail from unwanted people and companies. But Facebook messages are always from friends.
12. Facebook's "status updates" have become the easiest way to let friends know what you are doing and how you are feeling at any given moment.
<<<
Related to the idea of umbrella social networks is the idea of ‘Cloud computing’ – I have spoken of cloud computing many times on the OpenGardens blog for instance : Mobile Ajax- more than a pretty face and Cloud computing in the context of enterprise 2.0 . The idea has many adherents – especially Nokia and Google.
It is related to the idea of umbrella social networks since to have a seamless experience between the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise; the data has to ideally reside in the ‘Cloud’.
So, the core idea is of this blog(and the evolution of Web 2.0) can be summarised as:
Cloud + a social network user interface to the cloud(where the cloud spans the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise).
Eric Schmidt also refers to cloud computing as the future of applications with applications having characteristics like : being pieced together, small, data is in the cloud, run on any device PC or mobile phone, fast, customizable, distributed virally(social networks, email etc).
Conclusion
Let me recap the synopsis as the conclusion ..
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of web20. Instead, the full impact of web 20 itself has yet to be felt because web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.
Source: http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/10/beyond_web_20_t.html
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of Web20. The full impact of Web 20 itself has yet to be felt because Web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.
Introduction
It seems ironic to talk about ‘beyond Web 2.0’ almost a week away from the Berlin Web 2.0 expo (where I am speaking).
Extending the ‘2.0’ numbering notation, we could naturally think of Web 3.0.
Much has been already said about Web 3.0 – most of it self serving.
Nova Spivack and Jason Calacanis have each attempted to define Web 3.0 corresponding to their respective companies (Radar networks and Mahalo)
In a world of hyper connectivity and information sharing – such definitions don’t go very far because of their inherent limitations based on their proponent’s businesses. So, I won’t go into those in detail. You can read more about these definitions HERE
Even Tim Berners shrugs at the term Web 2.0 but ironically does not hesitate in attempting to speak of Web 3.0 as a form of Semantic web. Of course, the semantic web is defined in an article from Tim Berners Lee himself as early as 2001 in the Scientific American magazine (The Semantic Web A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila)
But to understand ‘beyond Web 2.0’ – we have to appreciate a bit about why Web 2.0 took off as much as it did .. and why so many people did(do!) not get it.
Social software and social computing
In defining the Web 2.0 paradigm, Tim O Reilly’s genius lies in taking computing along the social domain and in laying the intellectual foundations of a new class of software i.e. social software.
Even before the seven principles of Web 2.0 were postulated by Tim O Reilly, we intuitively accepted the social aspects of the Web(for example Wikis existed before that time and were created by Ward Cunningham). However, Web 2.0 brought all these ideas together and provided us a common lexicon / framework to discuss these terms
Critically, Web 2.0 comes under the umbrella of social computing/social software. The term Social software is normally applied to a range of web-enabled software programs that allow users to interact, share, and meet other users. (Adapted from wikipedia definition of social software)
One might view ‘social software’ as a contradiction in terms. Traditionally software is almost ‘antisocial’ (i.e. logical – with little or no human interaction)
Consequently, many people from a programming background find the idea of social software as ‘marketing driven hype’. And some from marketing – do indeed hype it as the next big thing.
However, that should not take us away from the basic merits of the Web 2.0 definition as defined by the seven principles of Web 2.0 and a new class of software that is underpinned by Web 2.0 principles like harnessing collective intelligence, the web as a platform and so on.
Beyond Web 2.0
If we recap the title of Tim Berners Lee’s article on the semantic web, it says : A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers
So, to me; it is all about meaningful to computers(semantic web)? OR meaningful to people(social software/social web)
Of course, they are not mutually exclusive .. hence they will coexist – but the emphasis on each is important. The semantic web is oriented to a new form for content that makes sense to machines. The social web(which includes Web 2.0 ) relates to web enabled software that facilitates communication between people.
The paths of machines and men .. are both divergent and coexisting.
So, let’s start with the machines(the semantic web)
The semantic Web
The end goal of the semantic web is to extract meaning from data. Hence, content should be machine readable, machine interpretable(the computer must make sense of it) and machine actionable. In its ultimate incarnation, it leads to the rarified world of science fiction bots negotiating deals on behalf of their creators.
How practical is all this?
Not very – in my view.
Avatars and bots aside, the more basic question is: Who will add the semantics(structure) to the semantic web?
The semantic web needs someone to do the semantics before it becomes truly useful. This is a chicken and egg situation – to make the semantic web useful, you need content to be tagged – but who would tag the content in the first place(and why)?
Semantics for a specific vertical are relatively easy. Semantics for 'Joe public'(consumers) are another matter entirely.
And to be really useful; the semantics must be for all .. And this is where almost all efforts led by specific companies may fail because the web cannot be expected to cede control to a company - it must be an open standard. And even if islands of semantics evolve(one for pharmaceuticals, one for automotive and so on), they may be just that - islands ... Islands of semantic content are useful – but do not translate into a semantic web.
Ironically, the best solution to the semantic web ‘chicken and egg’ problem(aka who will create the semantics for the semantic web) comes from Web 2.0(social web). Web 2.0 ‘works’ because it solves this very fundamental chicken and egg problem by getting the users to do the semantics in return for some benefits(storing and sharing pictures for example as in flickr). Thus, it provides a ‘lite’ solution to the semantic web problem.
This illustrates the limitations of taking a software only approach of the semantic web. If you ignore the social aspects of the Web, then software can take you only so far ..
Web 2.0
Before we proceed with this section, A quick note: I do not consider either Mobile Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 as ‘beyond’ Web 2.0 because they are sub memes of Web 2.0 i.e. extend the basic idea of Web 2.0 along specific dimensions.
Unlike the semantic Web, Web 2.0 addresses a completely different problem domain – that of social computing.
Thus, if we consider web 20 as primarily a manifestation of the social web, then it follows that the idea of 'beyond web 20' has to address the evolution of the social web (and not the semantic web)
In my view, the two Web 2.0 concepts that pertain to the evolution of the social web are
a) Social network as a 'meta/umbrella' layer above the personal, enterprise and the mobile web
And
b) Cloud computing
The full impact of both is yet to be felt.
The first is a relatively simple idea – but very disruptive ..
It can be summarised as ‘facebook(or similar) as your primary interface to the Web’.
The idea is - we "log in' to a single profile on our social network. The resultant social network then becomes an ‘umbrella’ network encompassing your Web, Mobile Web and even the Enterprise Web. The concept of umbrella social networks becomes even more powerful when presence is added to the mix.
This is a concern to many including Google. Many people no longer use email because email is replaced by facebook messages. If your entire web experience is replaced by facebook and the advertising for facebook is exclusively from Microsoft .. this is clearly a threat for Google(and a master move on behalf of Microsoft). So, already we are seeing some moves in this direction – and one can expect some response from Google to this.
(Note: I can't find the reference but JP Rangaswami had spoken of a similar idea – which I call ‘umbrella social networks’ - in one of his blogs. If I find the blog, I shall link it.)
To really work, this idea needs a fine grained privacy control and an open social network. But it is not so strange to think that our entire web experience may be driven from a facebook(or similar) profile. Facebook is already courting the enterprise
Also, in the article 15 reasons Facebook may be worth $15bn, here are some insights ..
>>>
7. Facebook is the new web: The decision to open up the network to outside developers turned Facebook into a destination for many uses, like messaging, photos and video. Of course, as Facebook is on the web it could never really be the new web.
11. Facebook messaging is the new e-mail. Everyone feels stressed from a deluge of e-mail from unwanted people and companies. But Facebook messages are always from friends.
12. Facebook's "status updates" have become the easiest way to let friends know what you are doing and how you are feeling at any given moment.
<<<
Related to the idea of umbrella social networks is the idea of ‘Cloud computing’ – I have spoken of cloud computing many times on the OpenGardens blog for instance : Mobile Ajax- more than a pretty face and Cloud computing in the context of enterprise 2.0 . The idea has many adherents – especially Nokia and Google.
It is related to the idea of umbrella social networks since to have a seamless experience between the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise; the data has to ideally reside in the ‘Cloud’.
So, the core idea is of this blog(and the evolution of Web 2.0) can be summarised as:
Cloud + a social network user interface to the cloud(where the cloud spans the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise).
Eric Schmidt also refers to cloud computing as the future of applications with applications having characteristics like : being pieced together, small, data is in the cloud, run on any device PC or mobile phone, fast, customizable, distributed virally(social networks, email etc).
Conclusion
Let me recap the synopsis as the conclusion ..
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of web20. Instead, the full impact of web 20 itself has yet to be felt because web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.
Source: http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/10/beyond_web_20_t.html
Is Web 3.0 is Coming?
Is Web 3.0 yet another buzz word, or is it a real turnaround in our industry?
Web 1.0 was the good old web of the 1990s. In those times, all client-side changes were the result of a server round-trip. The Internet was ramping up in popularity.
Web 2.0 has been a little more than just a technological evolution. The staple of Web 2.0 has been the emergence of social media (Internet users creating most of the content), powered by mature technologies (DHTML, Ajax) on somewhat stable web browsers.
Web 3.0 is not a revolution either. It is yet another technological evolution destined to provide users with an even better experience, both online and offline. Web 3.0 will lead to the blurring of that artificial wall between the web browser and the desktop, providing a full — but secure — integration with devices and services exposed by the operating system.
Web 3.0 is just starting. Look around you and you’ll see that Web 3.0 technologies are slowly cropping up everywhere on the web. Google Gears, one of the first Web 3.0 technologies, allows you to build web applications that can work offline. Thanks to Google Gears, applications such as Remember The Milk, an online to-do list and task management system, can now work offline. The Adobe Flash player already allows application developers limited access to the webcam and the microphone. Soon, we’ll also be able to drag and drop files from the desktop to a web browser (see this Java Upload Applet for an example using the Java technology)
Another aspect of Web 3.0 is the use of stunning graphics, smooth animations, high definition audio and video, 3D, etc. and all of this inside a web browser!
At first, Web 3.0 features will be available using plugins (Google Gears, Java, Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX and Firefox extensions, etc.) But slowly, we may start seeing browser vendors integrating them into their browsers, followed by some level of standardization. The HTML 5 Working Draft seems to be going in the right direction.
These are exciting times for web front-end engineers! The risk of fragmentation, inevitable with such ground-breaking technologies, will hopefully be mitigated in the short term by the use of JavaScript toolkits. The Dojo Toolkit, for example, has already started making Web 3.0 features available (see dojo.gfx and the Dojo Offline Toolkit) Hopefully, all the other major frameworks will follow suite so we can all start building cool new applications that wow our users!
Source: http://www.julienlecomte.net/blog/
Web 1.0 was the good old web of the 1990s. In those times, all client-side changes were the result of a server round-trip. The Internet was ramping up in popularity.
Web 2.0 has been a little more than just a technological evolution. The staple of Web 2.0 has been the emergence of social media (Internet users creating most of the content), powered by mature technologies (DHTML, Ajax) on somewhat stable web browsers.
Web 3.0 is not a revolution either. It is yet another technological evolution destined to provide users with an even better experience, both online and offline. Web 3.0 will lead to the blurring of that artificial wall between the web browser and the desktop, providing a full — but secure — integration with devices and services exposed by the operating system.
Web 3.0 is just starting. Look around you and you’ll see that Web 3.0 technologies are slowly cropping up everywhere on the web. Google Gears, one of the first Web 3.0 technologies, allows you to build web applications that can work offline. Thanks to Google Gears, applications such as Remember The Milk, an online to-do list and task management system, can now work offline. The Adobe Flash player already allows application developers limited access to the webcam and the microphone. Soon, we’ll also be able to drag and drop files from the desktop to a web browser (see this Java Upload Applet for an example using the Java technology)
Another aspect of Web 3.0 is the use of stunning graphics, smooth animations, high definition audio and video, 3D, etc. and all of this inside a web browser!
At first, Web 3.0 features will be available using plugins (Google Gears, Java, Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX and Firefox extensions, etc.) But slowly, we may start seeing browser vendors integrating them into their browsers, followed by some level of standardization. The HTML 5 Working Draft seems to be going in the right direction.
These are exciting times for web front-end engineers! The risk of fragmentation, inevitable with such ground-breaking technologies, will hopefully be mitigated in the short term by the use of JavaScript toolkits. The Dojo Toolkit, for example, has already started making Web 3.0 features available (see dojo.gfx and the Dojo Offline Toolkit) Hopefully, all the other major frameworks will follow suite so we can all start building cool new applications that wow our users!
Source: http://www.julienlecomte.net/blog/
Web 2.0 Crack Start to Show
SAN FRANCISCO -- No one may be able to agree on what Web 2.0 means, but the idea of a new, more collaborative internet is creating buzz reminiscent of the go-go days of the late 1990s.
Excitment over emerging new publishing theories -- and the whiff of a resurgence of startup financings -- this week drew throngs of geeks paying $2,800 a head to the sold-out Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Eight hundred people jostled in the doorways of early workshops devoted to tagging, innovations in search and raising venture capital.
Web 2.0, according to conference sponsor Tim O'Reilly, is an "architecture of participation" -- a constellation made up of links between web applications that rival desktop applications, the blog publishing revolution and self-service advertising. This architecture is based on social software where users generate content, rather than simply consume it, and on open programming interfaces that let developers add to a web service or get at data. It is an arena where the web rather than the desktop is the dominant platform, and organization appears spontaneously through the actions of the group, for example, in the creation of folksonomies created through tagging.
The theory has been percolating for some time. But it intensified last week when O'Reilly published an essay on the topic, as well as a graphic outlining the key categories of this new medium.
Ross Mayfield, the CEO of SocialText, a company that sells collaborative wiki software to enterprises and that is hosting the Web 2.0 wiki, had a simpler definition for conference goers.
"Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people," Mayfield said.
The day was not without skeptics.
In a freewheeling conversation with Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle, InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller, who recently purchased Ask.com, dismissed the idea that citizens with blogs and video editing software were major threats to the entertainment industry.
"There is not that much talent in the world," Diller said. "There are very few people in very few closets in very few rooms that are really talented and can't get out."
"People with talent and expertise at making entertainment products are not going to be displaced by 1,800 people coming up with their videos that they think are going to have an appeal."
That clear-headed observation didn't set well with some, including media critic Jeff Jarvis, who promptly blogged the talk and labeled Diller with the deadly moniker, "Web 1.0."
By whatever the theory, Web 2.0 is shaking up the status quo in web publishing, and feeding a surge of dealmaking.
Small Web 2.0 companies are already being snapped up by internet giants.
Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile phone social networking application, and recruited one of the princes of mash-ups, Paul Rademacher of Housingmaps.com, from his job at DreamWorks Animation SKG.
Yahoo snapped up Flickr, a community photo sharing application that relies heavily on tagging, and on Tuesday, bought Upcoming.org, an user-driven events tracking service.
Wednesday afternoon's LaunchPad presentation, featuring 13 companies giving six minute pitches, drew throngs, including venture capitalists smelling money to be made from the cleverness of young programmers, and representatives from internet giants trying to determine whether their business models were as doomed as bloggers have prophesied.
The crowd was so large that hotel staff had to break down the partitions separating three conference rooms to accommodate everyone.
The presentations included a demo of the well publicized, but as yet unreleased, Flock browser, that aims to make Firefox into a two-way communication tool.
Ian McCarthy of Orb showed the crowd how his software would let them stream media from their desktop using any web-enabled device, without having to worry about the format or bit rate of their movies or music.
Zvents.com unveiled its event finder (which currently covers only the San Francisco Bay Area) and claimed it was far better than the service Yahoo had purchased the day before.
Rollyo, short for roll your own search engine, officially launched at the demo, unveiling a service that lets users build their own specific search engines for travel or politics using Yahoo's search API.
Longtime RSS player Pub Sub unveiled its initiative, Structured Blogging, to help bring the fabled Semantic Web into being.
Structured Blogging allows bloggers to easily add structured meta-data to blog posts, such as movie reviews or event listings, so they can be easily found, read and syndicated by other sites.
The ad-hoc XML (no standards body has yet decided on what elements should be in such data) would make possible a search for book or product reviews that only returned real reviews, instead of the current jumbled listing of commerce sites and spammers that search engines currently provide.
But the crowd reserved its largest applause and its gasps of envy for Zimbra, a company which debuted its open-source enterprise software in early September.
The software, called a collaboration suite, performs the same server based calendaring and e-mail of Microsoft's Exchange Server.
Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj wowed the crowd with his demo of his Ajax-powered web client, which would display the calendar when mousing over a date mentioned in an e-mail and call a number through Skype when clicking on a phone number in a message.
Zimbra already has devotees working on the code and translating the interface into Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
Dharmaraj knows he's facing a tough battle taking on a flagship Microsoft product, but thinks that Web 2.0-style collaboration and the efforts of the open source community might be his savior.
"I would not like to take on the big boy by myself," Dharmaraj told Wired News. "I would love to take Microsoft on with IBM and Google and Apple on my side."
Source: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/10/69366?currentPage=all
Friendly Web 2.0
Social networks are great: you can stay in touch with friends all across the world and find new ones based on your interests. But often, social networks serve a single purpose or interest. For instance photos, videos or classmates from school and university.This is not a problem by itself, but when you want to keep track of all your contacts in all these social networks, this is a lot of work for you to update your contacts list in all the social networks you are in. And you also might need to get a member of a social network, although you’re not interesed in the subject, but only want to track your friends activities.NoseRub only defines the social network and some basic content types like media, links, micropublishing and text. You can now add all your contacts to a NoseRub network and aggregate several social networks into just one.And you always have full control of your data, as you can install NoseRub on your own server and have it connect to other servers out there.
Source: http://web2.0news.be/
Source: http://web2.0news.be/
Friday, November 9, 2007
Web 2.0 Keeps Ecommerce Strong
BuddeComm, an independent Australian telecommunications research firm has released a study that indicates strong new businesses models and booming growth in online advertising are rapidly building the foundations of the new Internet economy.
The research found that about $2 billion is projected to be spent on social network advertising in the U.S. by 2010. Social networking and user- generated content will play a major role among a variety of new applications in the Web 2.0 arena.
Paul Budde managing director at BuddeComm said, "It is the burgeoning number of households and businesses with broadband connections, which has been the main driver behind the current boom," Budde said. "In several European countries, 75 percent, or higher, of households have the Internet, which gives e-commerce a strong platform from which to do business."
This year Internet advertising spending is estimated to reach $31 billion globally, up from $24.4 billion last year. The $31 billion is 7 percent of overall ad spending across all media, up from 5.8 percent of the total in 2006. In 2008 Internet ad spending will account for around 8 percent of all spending and over 8.5 percent, or $43 billion out of a total of $495 billion, in 2009.
Online payment services such as PayPal have made a crucial contribution to the growth of ecommerce, creating easier ways for people to pay for products and services online.
The report finds that there are early indications, despite the strong growth of Web 2.0 that online spending growth may slow faster than first thought, to around 10 percent instead of 20 percent by the decades end. It could also indicate that ecommerce is maturing.
Submitted by Mike Sachoff on Fri, 11/09/2007
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/09/web-2-0-keeps-ecommerce-strong
The research found that about $2 billion is projected to be spent on social network advertising in the U.S. by 2010. Social networking and user- generated content will play a major role among a variety of new applications in the Web 2.0 arena.
Paul Budde managing director at BuddeComm said, "It is the burgeoning number of households and businesses with broadband connections, which has been the main driver behind the current boom," Budde said. "In several European countries, 75 percent, or higher, of households have the Internet, which gives e-commerce a strong platform from which to do business."
This year Internet advertising spending is estimated to reach $31 billion globally, up from $24.4 billion last year. The $31 billion is 7 percent of overall ad spending across all media, up from 5.8 percent of the total in 2006. In 2008 Internet ad spending will account for around 8 percent of all spending and over 8.5 percent, or $43 billion out of a total of $495 billion, in 2009.
Online payment services such as PayPal have made a crucial contribution to the growth of ecommerce, creating easier ways for people to pay for products and services online.
The report finds that there are early indications, despite the strong growth of Web 2.0 that online spending growth may slow faster than first thought, to around 10 percent instead of 20 percent by the decades end. It could also indicate that ecommerce is maturing.
Submitted by Mike Sachoff on Fri, 11/09/2007
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/09/web-2-0-keeps-ecommerce-strong
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Web 2.0 won't switch to mobile, says Blyk founder
Antti Ohrling, the founder of ad-funded mobile company Blyk, has warned that web 2.0 evangelists are wrong to assume the same phenomenon will transfer to mobile.
Mr Ohrling, who has just launched the company in the UK, signing the Daily Telegraph's Shaun Gregory this week, was speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising Summit.
"Internet web 2.0 people think that it [mobile usage] will become mobile 2.0," he said. "If you think that the mobile phone will be internet on the mobile then you are not right".
He pointed out that studies show people are not using many mobile applications such as the internet.
The "killer apps" - or must-have features - of mobile are text, voice and alarm clock functions, he said.
"Communications are everything," he said. "Mobile is a push medium, you call someone they call you, you text someone they text you".
Tying this into the model for Blyk - which offers free calls and texts to young people who agree to receive targeted ads - he argued that mobile advertising should involve ads based around "earning" attention.
"You don't see a print ad made for TV, so why make ads in mobile not based in communication?" he said.
He claimed that Blyk aimed to deliver relevant ads that engaged with and made offers to its target youth market, saying: "It is not advertising, it becomes a service to the end user."
He said Blyk was not a "free service for young kids in exchange for annoying advertising".
Mr Ohlring explained why Blyk chose the UK as its first market outside its native Scandinavia.
"We picked it [the UK] deliberately because it is the biggest single ad market in Europe," he explained.
"Digital spend is high and is more advanced than the rest of Europe. It is a mature market and so there is room for us."
He said if consumers were to take up internet-related applications they had to become free and much easier to use.
"Access is one barrier and cost is another," he said. The result is that users, especially younger demographics, see "minimal" perceived value in using the internet on mobile.
Earlier this week Blyk hired the Daily Telegraph's director of new media, Shaun Gregory, to become chief executive of the UK operation.
Gregory, a former senior executive at Emap Radio, joined the Telegraph in October last year with a brief to expand its online, TV and mobile operations.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.
Source: http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2183639,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=4
Mr Ohrling, who has just launched the company in the UK, signing the Daily Telegraph's Shaun Gregory this week, was speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising Summit.
"Internet web 2.0 people think that it [mobile usage] will become mobile 2.0," he said. "If you think that the mobile phone will be internet on the mobile then you are not right".
He pointed out that studies show people are not using many mobile applications such as the internet.
The "killer apps" - or must-have features - of mobile are text, voice and alarm clock functions, he said.
"Communications are everything," he said. "Mobile is a push medium, you call someone they call you, you text someone they text you".
Tying this into the model for Blyk - which offers free calls and texts to young people who agree to receive targeted ads - he argued that mobile advertising should involve ads based around "earning" attention.
"You don't see a print ad made for TV, so why make ads in mobile not based in communication?" he said.
He claimed that Blyk aimed to deliver relevant ads that engaged with and made offers to its target youth market, saying: "It is not advertising, it becomes a service to the end user."
He said Blyk was not a "free service for young kids in exchange for annoying advertising".
Mr Ohlring explained why Blyk chose the UK as its first market outside its native Scandinavia.
"We picked it [the UK] deliberately because it is the biggest single ad market in Europe," he explained.
"Digital spend is high and is more advanced than the rest of Europe. It is a mature market and so there is room for us."
He said if consumers were to take up internet-related applications they had to become free and much easier to use.
"Access is one barrier and cost is another," he said. The result is that users, especially younger demographics, see "minimal" perceived value in using the internet on mobile.
Earlier this week Blyk hired the Daily Telegraph's director of new media, Shaun Gregory, to become chief executive of the UK operation.
Gregory, a former senior executive at Emap Radio, joined the Telegraph in October last year with a brief to expand its online, TV and mobile operations.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.
Source: http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2183639,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=4
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