In the midst of the ongoing debate regarding the NUJ Commission on Multi Media Working, Kaspar Dambis summed up a number of blogs (including one by yours truly!) and stated that some of the authors could perhaps stop batting the term Web 2.0 about unless they actually know what it means.
In the light of this, I thought it would be worthwhile posting a blog to briefly define the term (or at least attempt to!) for future reference.
Tim O’Reilly has provided a comprehensive, in-depth explanation of Web 2.0 is in his article “What is Web 2.0 - Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software“.
In a nutshell, O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 after the dot com crash. After the Dot Com bubble had burst there were a number of successful websites that survived, all of which exhibited the characteristics that we now associate with Web 2.0.
To put it simply (and I have to, because I am no computer programmer!), the sites utilised software that enabled greater levels of interactivity and greater control of data, which then allowed the ‘harnessing of collective intelligence’ - that is, the collective information of the users allowed the sites to grow organically. This realisation paved the way for the Web 2.0 Conference - now known as the Web 2.0 Summit.
In his article, O’Reilly cited seven pointers that would define whether a site has Web 2.0 properties, or not:
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
Websites such as Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia all exhibit at least a number of these pointers, and it is easy to see how the users have collectively driven the content, and allowed the sites to expand significantly.
However, despite O’Reilly’s pointers there is no concrete definition of Web 2.0. It could be argued that Web 2.0 is more about how people have implemented the technology, rather than the evolving technology itself. It should certainly not be construed as a new version of the Internet.
How this is related to the original argument regarding the NUJ’s concerns over whether the standard of traditional (i.e. professional) journalism is affected by the concept of Web 2.0 (i.e. the increased opportunity for user-generated content, blogging, citizen journalism, easier access and control over large amounts of data, etc), is open to debate.
Suw Charman and Kevin Anderson put Web 2.0 into context in their recent blog by stating:
“Web 2.0 is far more than asking people “tell us what you reckon”. Rather, it creates an opportunity for journalists to find not just eyewitnesses, but also expertise from what Jay Rosen calls “the people formerly known as the audience”. Any journalist worth his or her salt should be interested in talking to people that witnessed or who can shed real light on news events, and should be willing to go beyond the limits of their own address book - Web 2.0 enables that in a way we’ve never seen before.”
Furthermore, Martin Stabe’s recent blog highlights the launch of a new “Web 2.0 regional news portal“- a German regional online news model that totally encompasses Web 2.0 in a way that many news publications have not done previously.
And finally, as Lloyd Shepherd argues, perhaps it is more constructive to listen to the NUJ’s concerns for the future of journalism whilst accepting that they need to fully understand the issue in order to fight their corner more effectively.
Whatever your opinion, the fact that this debate is still doing the rounds is in itself extremely positive.
Sian Claire Owen
Filed under: Sian Claire, online journalism | 3 Comments »