WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: What was Web 2.0? 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:14.080 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.279 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio, and 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.360 how the tech are you? It's time for a tech 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.520 Stuff classic episode. This episode is called what was Web 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.720 two point oh? It originally published on October two fifteen. 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:32.280 And I know I've talked about Web two point oh 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.960 not too long ago. Actually, it's usually in discussions about 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:42.400 Web three as well, the so called future of the web, 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:44.839 or at least something that a lot of people are 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.000 pushing very hard to be the future of the web. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.599 Whether it turns out to be that or not remains 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:56.279 to be seen. I'm somewhat skeptical, but that doesn't mean 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.160 that it won't happen. It just, you know, it just 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.320 means I could be which which has happened? But yeah, 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.800 Web two point oh and interesting concept. Some would argue 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:10.200 a concept that was made in hindsight to define something 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.600 that had happened, as opposed to something that was happening. 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:17.399 So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode. 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.080 Back in Chris Pallette and I did an episode about 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:25.560 what is Web two point oh? But I think we've 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:27.600 had enough time since then to really take a look 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.080 back and explore what the concept of web two point 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:33.240 oh was and what if anything is taking its place, 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:37.399 and does the term mean anything? Was it just kind 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.440 of a placeholder. It's gonna be a lot of opinion 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:44.920 in this because it's from my own personal perspective. But honestly, 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:46.800 if you've heard the term web two point oh and 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.680 you always wondered what that meant, that's what I want 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.240 to cover today. But to start off, we need to 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:56.160 look at a history of the web itself. And I'm 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.960 sure you all know that the web and the inner 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.960 net are two different things, but just in case, let's 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.040 lay down that groundwork. Now. The Internet refers to the 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:13.240 network of networks, this gigantic network of computer networks that 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.520 are all interconnected together. There's a series of connections that 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.640 allows computers to communicate with one another. So this is 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:25.560 an enormous system that allows all kinds of different types 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:29.760 of communication to go across it. And back in the day, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.280 we used to talk about the Internet in the terms 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.560 of the information super Highway. You might be familiar with 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.600 that term. So it was kind of the infrastructure that 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:44.320 allowed rapid communication across the globe and allowed people who 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.640 are on one computer network to communicate directly with people 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.200 who are on a totally separate computer network. Because of 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:55.320 this interconnectivity, now the Web is just one way to 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:58.840 send and consume information on that super highway. So you 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.360 can think of it as a v hicle that shares 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.800 the super highway with other vehicles. So the Web would 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.200 be like a giant bus. And then you might have 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.520 a freight train that's or not freight train, but a 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:12.880 freight truck that's driving right next to it that's file 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.680 transfer protocol, or a bunch of mail vehicles in a 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.960 I L that would stand for email, that kind of stuff. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:23.840 These would all be traveling along the Internet. None of 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:27.639 them are the Internet. They're just a means of communication 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.440 that exists because the Internet is the platform upon which 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:36.640 they exist. So you access the Web through a web browser. 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:40.080 Big shock there, I'm sure we usually refer to that 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.200 as the client. Your machine with the web browser is 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:47.560 the client, and the browser or client lets you request 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:51.200 information from another machine on the Internet, which we call 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.120 a server. The server receives your request in response to 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.080 it sends the relevant data back to you. And all 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.680 of that is done through a visual her face. In 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:05.200 other words, you've got something rendered out as uh uh, 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.200 you know, something that's easy to to interpret and consume 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:14.320 within the browser, as opposed to a text based approach 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.800 that is, you know, marred by lots of code that 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.440 might be really confusing to you. Now, the path taken 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.400 by your request and the returning information isn't set in stone, 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.159 So this is different from roads. This is where the 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.279 road analogy really breaks down, because if you have a 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.920 set of roads between you and your destination, you might 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.960 be able to take a detour, or perhaps two detours 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.599 if things are really bad. Let's say there's flooding. You 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.240 can't get to where you are going using your normal routes. 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.080 But the way the Internet goes it's way more robust 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:53.520 than that. The information is delivered via packets. The packets 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.440 all can travel different pathways to get to their destination, 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:00.280 whereupon everything gets put back together and displayed. For now, 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.760 that's not just for Web information. That's for all information 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:08.159 going across the Internet traffic. But it's uh. One of 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:10.719 the reasons why the Internet is so useful. It's that 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.400 you don't have to worry if there is a break 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.400 in the communication lines between you and the web server 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:20.359 because the data can route around That very important if 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.320 you have machines that are constantly going on and offline. 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:25.960 So back to the web. Now, the birthplace of the 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:30.240 world Wide Web is CERN. That's the same organization that 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.599 oversees the large had drawn colliders. So we're talking particle 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:37.719 physics and loll cats all because of CERN. Thanks CERN, 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.560 specifically say thanks to Tim berners Lee, who developed what 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.960 would become the basis of the Worldwide Web on the 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.240 Next computer. And uh, in case you're not familiar with 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:52.720 what Next is or was, really it was a computer 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.240 platform developed by Steve Jobs after he had been forced 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.640 from Apple. So Apple forced Steve Jobs out of the 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.560 company or Steve Jobs quit, depending upon the person telling 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:08.040 the story, and as a result, Steve Jobs then went 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.040 on to found a new company called Next and develop 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.400 a new type of computer. Eventually he would come back 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.840 to Apple. Essentially, Apple begged Steve Jobs to return just 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:21.480 as Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy and Next 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.240 kind of faded away. But it was the Next computer 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.040 that Tim burners Lee was using to develop web pages 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.640 and the first web browser. In fact, The first website 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:36.520 was built in by Tim burners Lee, and he hosted 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.360 it on his own computer. That site contained information about 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.160 the purpose and structure of the web, so kind of 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:46.200 an explanation of what the web would be capable of, 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:48.600 and also a set of instructions on how to create 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.159 your own web server, because obviously the web is only 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.800 really useful if other people start to join on. Otherwise 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.800 it's just kind of a you know, you just logging 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.960 remotely to someone else's computer. It's not that exciting now. 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:05.479 The browser he built was called Worldwide Web is where 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:09.720 we get that from. And things continued along a lot 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.360 of research centers and students began to get access to 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.080 the world Wide Web. But things really took off on 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:21.880 April three. That's when uh CERN decided to release the 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.640 web to the general public, meaning they made the information 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.120 itself on how the web works public and open. Along 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:31.560 with the open license for the web. CERN offered a 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.280 basic browser and a library of code to help things 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.520 move along, and it didn't take long for other organizations 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.000 and eventually people and companies to join in. So also 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:45.840 in nine three, the National Center for super Computing Applications 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:50.600 or in c s A released Mosaic one point Oh, 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.239 and that became the first web browser to really find 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.040 popularity among the general public. At this point, most of 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.320 the people using the web were still researchers and students, 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.680 but gradually people outside of these groups began to learn 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:05.920 of the web. It started to get press coverage, and 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.400 people began to get excited by this concept of a 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.520 computer network that you could access and find real information 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.040 and communicate with people in real time. And here's a 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.800 funny note. During this time, I was in college and 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.280 my first impression of the Web at that time was 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.080 that it was slow, and it was unattractive and it 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.360 was superfluous. I had become used to browsing the Internet 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:33.199 using other means like tel net to connect to chat 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:37.520 rooms or games or whatever, or even uh not full 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.840 Internet access, things like bolletin board systems, and I just 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.920 thought that the graphical approach to the Web was completely 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.240 unnecessary and slow things down. The browser had to take 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.320 time to get the information and render the stuff you 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:54.679 needed to see, and at the time, the Internet connectivity 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:58.520 and the power of computers meant that that stuff took ages. 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:00.960 And I just thought, well, who wants to sit around 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.560 forever to try and get this information when you could 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.760 get it so much faster using FTP or tell net 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:08.680 or whatever it may be, depending upon the kind of 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.080 information you're interested in. So I thought the web was 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.480 probably a flash in the pan. It would not be 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.600 the last time I'd be radically wrong about the technology. 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.400 You think I'd learned at any rate, by the web 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:27.160 was making headlines and e commerce became a thing. One 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:31.080 of the earliest examples I could find was that Pizza 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:36.520 Hut sold a pizza online, actually allowing customers to order 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:41.040 pizza in some areas using the web. The company Yahoo 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.560 was founded around this time too, and its main purpose 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:46.640 at that time was to serve as just a search 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.360 engine to help search for the content on the web, 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.000 making it easier for people to find stuff they wanted. 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.640 Before search engines, it was pretty tough. You had to 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.480 be kind of you kind of had to be part 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.200 of the that understood how the web worked. Now today, 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:05.160 we're all used to things like you r l s 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:07.800 where you have to type in a web address. In fact, 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:09.640 there may be a couple of websites that you still 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.400 navigate to by typing in the web address, but not 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.120 everyone is comfortable with that, so search engines made it 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.200 much easier for people to interact with the Web without 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.440 having to memorize the protocol that they would need in 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.960 order to visit a specific website. Now, much later than 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.480 the early nineties, we look back on the websites of 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.440 this era as being pre Web two point oh. For 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.400 the most part, you could probably call them web one 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.480 point oh. But that's what we call a retronym, meaning 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.640 we named it after the thing had already happened. Uh. 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.760 And it's kind of like World War One. While World 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.040 War One was going on, no one referred to it 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.240 as World War One. There had not been a World 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.960 War two yet, there'd be no reason to call it 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:59.080 world War one unless you expected there to be another one, 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.600 so you might something else, like the Great War. Uh. 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.599 And it was only in in a you know, in retrospect, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:08.679 when World War Two broke out that World War One 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:13.560 really got that name. So what actually defines Web one 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:17.480 point oh? For lack of a better term, Not everyone 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:19.840 even thinks Web one point oh is is a thing 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.320 at all? Like it It doesn't make any sense, but 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.600 some people will use that term, but wasn't actually described well. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.440 The websites in those days. Most of them were largely 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.760 static pages, which means you would navigate to a page 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:37.040 and see what was there, and after doing that, there'd 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.559 probably be very little reason to ever return to that 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.960 page because it's going to be pretty much the same. Uh. 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.200 It's kind of like the equivalent of a magazine or 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.320 a book. You know, if you go and you read 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.520 a magazine and you close the magazine, then you come 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:52.840 back to it and you open it up to the 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.920 same page, it's going to be the same magazine article. 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:58.680 It doesn't change from one moment to the next. That's 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:00.840 the way a lot of web sites were in the 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:04.840 early days. We'll be back to talk more about what 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:17.760 web two point oh is after this quick break. Those 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.840 web pages didn't have any way for visitors to have 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.559 any kind of meaningful interaction on the site, and most 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.880 there might be a visitor counter that would click up 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.200 a notch each time someone navigated to the website, and 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:33.600 those were a huge deal early on. I don't know 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.720 if you guys remember, but I remember lots of websites 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.440 having a visitor counter, and they took it as a 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.840 matter of pride when they passed a arbitrary milestone like 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.160 five thousand visitors or something like that, but there was 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.679 no way to leave comments or have any other impact 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.120 on the site. For the most part, for these types 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.160 of web pages. Now there were exceptions. Some websites were 0:12:55.200 --> 0:13:00.280 dedicated to updating content regularly, or they were allowing people 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.800 to leave their own contributions, or even both of those things. 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.000 At the same time, there was a student at Swarthmore 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.360 College named Justin Hall who started up a web page 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:12.720 in and originally it was just a collection of links 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.560 that he thought were particularly interesting. The website was called 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:19.480 Justin's Links, and not long after he started the site, 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.080 he actually saw the potential to do something more with 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:24.960 it than just show a collection of links, and he 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.040 sought as a way to publish his thoughts to a 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.160 global audience, kind of like an online journal, and a 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.600 lot of people point to Justin's Links as being the 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.400 first blog uh. This sort of approach of using the 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.959 web as sort of a dynamic communication tool set the 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:42.000 side apart from a lot of the web pages that 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.760 were around at the same time, but many sites lacked 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.720 that sort of dynamic approach, and at the same time, 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.840 companies began to rush the web in hopes of beating 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.600 competitors to the punch. The web was viewed as kind 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:56.800 of a Wild West type of territory in which a 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.560 company could stake its claim online and stand to make 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:02.720 a ton of money in the short term before everyone 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:07.880 else caught up. Simultaneously, several companies emerged that use the 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:12.200 web as the very foundation for the company itself. Some 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:17.280 of them offered goods or services to consumers, so normal 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.200 people who are just using the web themselves. Others were 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.760 targeting other companies and they were offering up services meant 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.000 to help businesses succeed, but many of these lacked any 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.440 sort of cohesive business plan, which caused a big problem. 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.200 They were offering up services that some people found helpful, 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.000 but they didn't have any way of making money. And 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:40.560 this obviously is not something that has just gone away. 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.160 We've seen this with lots of different services, some of 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.800 which exists solely as a means to try and get 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:53.360 acquired by other larger businesses. Uh which can work if 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.000 you have a great idea for a service or app 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.960 that people are going to really enjoy using, but you 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:03.280 don't have a way of generating money from that, it 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:05.880 might just be good enough to get a lot of 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.760 attention and then wait for someone to offer to buy you. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.840 You know, maybe they'll figure out a way of using it, 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.280 or maybe they'll pair it with stuff they already have, 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.440 and that's how it makes money. But back then, not 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:24.480 having a plan just wasn't really working for people. Towards 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.400 the end of the ninety nineties, web companies were sprouting 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:32.360 up all over the place, and investors were really excited 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.640 at the opportunity to get in on the ground floor 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:37.960 of something that had the potential to become huge, meaning 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.800 you could stand to become a millionaire overnight with some 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.960 of these opportunities, and they began to flood startup companies 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:48.720 with cash. More than a few of those startup companies 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.840 ended up with way more money than what they needed, 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.280 and that encouraged some bad decisions on the part of founders. 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:01.080 A lot of founders began to spend that excess cash 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:07.800 by creating lavish headquarters or crazy benefits for employees. Meanwhile, 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:10.240 their businesses still didn't have a way of making revenue. 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.200 So in other words, let's say that you want to 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.040 open up a lemonade stand, and normally you would just 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.000 need a few dollars to buy some lemons and some sugar, 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:21.800 you get some water, and then you put all that together. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.200 Maybe you get a little poster board to write up 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.960 a sign. So maybe you're starting budget is twenty dollars 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.520 and you're selling it for five cents a cup, and 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.120 you figure out that after a certain number of cups, 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.680 you know you've got plenty of of of supply there. 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.520 After a certain number of cups, you're going to break even. Uh, 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:41.880 and then after that's all profit and you've got enough 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:46.080 to make a decent profit over your investment. Well, now 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.280 imagine that you are opening up that lemonade stand, but 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:54.200 someone's given you twenty thousand dollars and you don't have 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:57.360 any way of scaling up your operation, so you just 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.040 spend that extra money on a really nice lemonade stand 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:06.159 and you know, a super nifty titanium lemon crusher, that 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.320 kind of stuff. It doesn't help you make money in 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:11.520 the long run. It just means that's how you spent 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:15.200 your your startup cash. A lot of companies fell into 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:19.679 this trap. You can read about startups dot com industries 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:23.600 in the late nineties and how ridiculously lavish some of 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:29.520 their offices were, and it was a mess. So compounding 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.240 that problem was the fact that a lot of these 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:37.040 companies were rewarding employees by giving them shares of the company. Now, 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:41.080 if everything was working fine, that's great, because those shares 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.160 are worth real money once you get to a point 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.800 where the employees are allowed to sell those shares. Usually 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.840 there's a period where employees are not allowed to do 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.840 that sort of thing until they get to a particular 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:57.320 point in the fiscal year. But here's where the real 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.399 problems came in, because a lot of these companies began 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.159 to falter when people realized, hey, they don't really have 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.840 a way of making money and they can only keep 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:11.320 treading water with investment money for so long before everything 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.240 falls apart. And it was like a house of cards. 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:17.200 It all fell down, and it didn't all fall down 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.320 on a single day. It's not like there's a particular 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.159 day you can point to and say this is the 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:25.639 day the bubble burst, the bubble meaning this speculation bubble 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.879 of the value of dot com companies. Instead, it happened 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.840 over a course of years from two thousand one essentially, 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.400 and during that time people began to get more suspicious 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.080 of dot com companies that began to ask harder questions. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.040 The companies themselves were starting to run out of that 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.760 investment money, and because they hadn't found a way to 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.880 generate enough revenue, they couldn't stay afloat, and a lot 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.280 of them went completely out of business. Some of them 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:57.200 took serious hits to their value. Amazon dot Com, for example, 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.440 was around in those days and for a while had 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:01.640 shares the were in the triple digit value, like over 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:05.439 a hundred dollars a share, but after the bubble burst 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:10.000 it dropped to less than ten dollars a share. Huge drop. 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:15.080 But companies like Amazon were large enough and and savvy 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.199 enough to wade through that time and emerge out the 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.679 other side. Not all companies were so lucky, and the 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.520 worst part of this is that those employees who had 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:28.120 worked so hard and had been rewarded in stock now 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:32.760 found themselves with worthless stock. The companies were bankrupt, so 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.240 the shares were not worth anything, and that was a 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:39.360 huge issue. So you had all these people who, for 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.719 a while, on paper, were millionaires and then suddenly they 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.800 were broke, or at least they weren't millionaires anymore. Many 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.639 dot com companies went on to business um and those 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:54.520 that stayed around, people wanted to try and figure out, well, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.640 what what set them apart, what made them different? How 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.400 did these companies survive, How did these website it's make 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:04.000 it through the dot com bubble burst while so many 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.400 others went away. And that's where the term web two 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:12.040 point oh really comes into play. Now, personally, I think 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.440 it's a dumb term. It's terrible. It suggests a chronological order, 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.560 So it would suggest that there was first Web one 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:21.480 point oh and then at some point there was a 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.280 Web two point oh release. Because it's very similar to 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:28.680 the way we look at software. For example, we're operating systems. 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.520 But that's not what this means. It's not the way 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.280 it works. So I think it's ultimately more confusing than helpful. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.080 But that's what we have, uh. And the truth is 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.840 that both websites that were more in the Web one 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.399 point oh frame than the Web two point oh frame 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.720 and Web two point o websites existed at the same time. 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:53.440 In other words, this wasn't chronological. You can't point to 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:57.440 a date and say after this time all the websites 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:02.800 were Web two point oh. Even with Justin's links, we 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:06.840 start seeing Web two point oh philosophy working its way 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.080 into websites. And that was years before the dot com 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:15.639 bubble burst. So it's problematic using this term, but at 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:20.040 any rate, we need to look at what actually happened, 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.119 like why is this term around in the first place, 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:27.879 And that's because of the O'Reilly Media company. So in 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.600 two thousand four, Tim O'Reilly who was the founder of 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:34.480 O'Reilly Media, and Dale Dougherty, who was a VP and 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.439 O'Reilly we're having a brainstorming session. They were trying to 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:41.560 come up with a an event that could really focus 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:46.639 on what makes a web company successful? Why were some 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:50.200 web companies able to survive while so many others failed. 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:53.680 What were the mistakes that the older websites made or 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.480 the failed websites made, and what were the success stories? 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.040 And so they started trying to think, well, how are 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:01.879 we going to define what's the what's the way we 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:07.040 create a catchy term to explain the new philosophy of 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:10.119 the web the one that survived. And that's where they 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:13.919 came up with the term web two point oh. And 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.800 that was it. It was just to give a name 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.040 to a summit, the Web two point oh Summit, which 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.760 took place in two thousand four, and they had several 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:26.840 since then, but they just wanted a way to say 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.360 these are the type of websites that did all right 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:33.000 throughout the dot com bubble verse. These are the ones 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.640 that had the traits that allowed them to survive. Now, 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:39.359 in general, the qualities that define web two point oh 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:42.159 are that they tend to be dynamic pages rather than 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:44.399 static ones, meaning that there's a reason for you to 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:47.600 go back and look at it again. It's not something 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.800 that's going to be a page out of the encyclopedia 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:53.719 and it never ever changes. That makes it web two 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.240 point oh. Another is that there tends to be some 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:01.800 way for users to generate content and submitted to the website. 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:05.639 That may be something along the lines of blogging, where 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.480 the users are journaling using the web page as a 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:12.960 place for their journal to go. Or it might be 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.600 social media site where they're just reaching out to friends 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:22.240 or sharing links or stories or jokes or whatever. Or 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:26.679 it might be something more akin to Amazon, where users 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.120