Web 2.0 - Grim Reaper Arrives for Thee?
On David Galbraith’s blog and Om Malik’s GigaOm, the death of Web 2.0, apparently, has arrived.
It might be useful to first look back and see what Web 2.0 was, so we can recognize what passed away.
Tim O’Reilly and his tradeshow group, MediaLive International, are credited with having created the term.
In his treatise from 2005, O’Reilly outlined key characteristics of Web 2.0 and its companies:
1. The Web As Platform - Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core…
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence - The central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence…
3. Data is the Next Intel Inside - Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as “infoware” rather than merely software.
4. End of the Software Release Cycle - …one of the defining characteristics of internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product.
5. Lightweight Programming Models - RSS has become perhaps the single most widely deployed web service because of its simplicity, while the complex corporate web services stacks have yet to achieve wide deployment.
Obviously, there is a flexibility and ‘lightness’ in 2.0 companies from O’Reilly’s description.
So, Why is the Grim Reaper here for 2.0?
The death seems to manifest itself in two areas.
Companies can now get funding for just about anything with the overused ‘2.0′ moniker - as Galbraith suggests when Techcrunch reviewed Rearden Commerce.
With $100 million in funding, Galbraith apparently believes this company signifies the height of 2.0 foolishness:
Rearden has a hilariously meaningless ‘long tail’ graph and [is] apparently going after the services market: ’services are roughly 60% of the worldwide economy.’ Oh yeah, [is] Rearden gonna run the Bosnian police force (like Computer Sciences Corporation) and hook up tourists with Bangkok Ladymen?
It reminds me of a few of the great dot bombs as well. Remember Net Perceptions, Hear Interactive or how about?… there were so many. Cnet has a great retrospective here.
Another reason for 2.0’s death is given by OmMalik as he steps back from the details and puts it all into perspective:
The fundamental tenets of Web 2.0 or what I like to think of as the connected web are as valid as ever before, when Tim O’Reilly wrote his manifesto. However, innovators, entrepreneurs and even larger players have to take off the rose-tinted glasses, and worry about web giants’ ability to go from friend-to-foe almost overnight.
What do you do then? How is your business model impacted by such moves, and how much wiggle space you have to charge your customers? In other words, one can’t be wide-eyed about anything anymore.
This is reminiscent of the same conversation swirling around the latest behemoth in the business world, Google, as chronicled in a BusinessWeek article by Rob Hof earlier this week: “Is Google Too Powerful?”
With the companies connected in many different ways through 2.0 technologies and ideals, it’s hard to know where your competition starts or where partnerships begin, for example. We are all connected.
It’s good, right? Maybe not… hence the ‘end’ of Web 2.0 for some.
Update: GigaOm - Web 2.0 & Death of the Network Engineer
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