Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio, and
Speaker 1: how the tech are you? It's time for a tech
Speaker 1: Stuff classic episode. This episode is called what was Web
Speaker 1: two point oh? It originally published on October two fifteen.
Speaker 1: And I know I've talked about Web two point oh
Speaker 1: not too long ago. Actually, it's usually in discussions about
Speaker 1: Web three as well, the so called future of the web,
Speaker 1: or at least something that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: pushing very hard to be the future of the web.
Speaker 1: Whether it turns out to be that or not remains
Speaker 1: to be seen. I'm somewhat skeptical, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it won't happen. It just, you know, it just
Speaker 1: means I could be which which has happened? But yeah,
Speaker 1: Web two point oh and interesting concept. Some would argue
Speaker 1: a concept that was made in hindsight to define something
Speaker 1: that had happened, as opposed to something that was happening.
Speaker 1: So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode.
Speaker 1: Back in Chris Pallette and I did an episode about
Speaker 1: what is Web two point oh? But I think we've
Speaker 1: had enough time since then to really take a look
Speaker 1: back and explore what the concept of web two point
Speaker 1: oh was and what if anything is taking its place,
Speaker 1: and does the term mean anything? Was it just kind
Speaker 1: of a placeholder. It's gonna be a lot of opinion
Speaker 1: in this because it's from my own personal perspective. But honestly,
Speaker 1: if you've heard the term web two point oh and
Speaker 1: you always wondered what that meant, that's what I want
Speaker 1: to cover today. But to start off, we need to
Speaker 1: look at a history of the web itself. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure you all know that the web and the inner
Speaker 1: net are two different things, but just in case, let's
Speaker 1: lay down that groundwork. Now. The Internet refers to the
Speaker 1: network of networks, this gigantic network of computer networks that
Speaker 1: are all interconnected together. There's a series of connections that
Speaker 1: allows computers to communicate with one another. So this is
Speaker 1: an enormous system that allows all kinds of different types
Speaker 1: of communication to go across it. And back in the day,
Speaker 1: we used to talk about the Internet in the terms
Speaker 1: of the information super Highway. You might be familiar with
Speaker 1: that term. So it was kind of the infrastructure that
Speaker 1: allowed rapid communication across the globe and allowed people who
Speaker 1: are on one computer network to communicate directly with people
Speaker 1: who are on a totally separate computer network. Because of
Speaker 1: this interconnectivity, now the Web is just one way to
Speaker 1: send and consume information on that super highway. So you
Speaker 1: can think of it as a v hicle that shares
Speaker 1: the super highway with other vehicles. So the Web would
Speaker 1: be like a giant bus. And then you might have
Speaker 1: a freight train that's or not freight train, but a
Speaker 1: freight truck that's driving right next to it that's file
Speaker 1: transfer protocol, or a bunch of mail vehicles in a
Speaker 1: I L that would stand for email, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: These would all be traveling along the Internet. None of
Speaker 1: them are the Internet. They're just a means of communication
Speaker 1: that exists because the Internet is the platform upon which
Speaker 1: they exist. So you access the Web through a web browser.
Speaker 1: Big shock there, I'm sure we usually refer to that
Speaker 1: as the client. Your machine with the web browser is
Speaker 1: the client, and the browser or client lets you request
Speaker 1: information from another machine on the Internet, which we call
Speaker 1: a server. The server receives your request in response to
Speaker 1: it sends the relevant data back to you. And all
Speaker 1: of that is done through a visual her face. In
Speaker 1: other words, you've got something rendered out as uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something that's easy to to interpret and consume
Speaker 1: within the browser, as opposed to a text based approach
Speaker 1: that is, you know, marred by lots of code that
Speaker 1: might be really confusing to you. Now, the path taken
Speaker 1: by your request and the returning information isn't set in stone,
Speaker 1: So this is different from roads. This is where the
Speaker 1: road analogy really breaks down, because if you have a
Speaker 1: set of roads between you and your destination, you might
Speaker 1: be able to take a detour, or perhaps two detours
Speaker 1: if things are really bad. Let's say there's flooding. You
Speaker 1: can't get to where you are going using your normal routes.
Speaker 1: But the way the Internet goes it's way more robust
Speaker 1: than that. The information is delivered via packets. The packets
Speaker 1: all can travel different pathways to get to their destination,
Speaker 1: whereupon everything gets put back together and displayed. For now,
Speaker 1: that's not just for Web information. That's for all information
Speaker 1: going across the Internet traffic. But it's uh. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why the Internet is so useful. It's that
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry if there is a break
Speaker 1: in the communication lines between you and the web server
Speaker 1: because the data can route around That very important if
Speaker 1: you have machines that are constantly going on and offline.
Speaker 1: So back to the web. Now, the birthplace of the
Speaker 1: world Wide Web is CERN. That's the same organization that
Speaker 1: oversees the large had drawn colliders. So we're talking particle
Speaker 1: physics and loll cats all because of CERN. Thanks CERN,
Speaker 1: specifically say thanks to Tim berners Lee, who developed what
Speaker 1: would become the basis of the Worldwide Web on the
Speaker 1: Next computer. And uh, in case you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: what Next is or was, really it was a computer
Speaker 1: platform developed by Steve Jobs after he had been forced
Speaker 1: from Apple. So Apple forced Steve Jobs out of the
Speaker 1: company or Steve Jobs quit, depending upon the person telling
Speaker 1: the story, and as a result, Steve Jobs then went
Speaker 1: on to found a new company called Next and develop
Speaker 1: a new type of computer. Eventually he would come back
Speaker 1: to Apple. Essentially, Apple begged Steve Jobs to return just
Speaker 1: as Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy and Next
Speaker 1: kind of faded away. But it was the Next computer
Speaker 1: that Tim burners Lee was using to develop web pages
Speaker 1: and the first web browser. In fact, The first website
Speaker 1: was built in by Tim burners Lee, and he hosted
Speaker 1: it on his own computer. That site contained information about
Speaker 1: the purpose and structure of the web, so kind of
Speaker 1: an explanation of what the web would be capable of,
Speaker 1: and also a set of instructions on how to create
Speaker 1: your own web server, because obviously the web is only
Speaker 1: really useful if other people start to join on. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just kind of a you know, you just logging
Speaker 1: remotely to someone else's computer. It's not that exciting now.
Speaker 1: The browser he built was called Worldwide Web is where
Speaker 1: we get that from. And things continued along a lot
Speaker 1: of research centers and students began to get access to
Speaker 1: the world Wide Web. But things really took off on
Speaker 1: April three. That's when uh CERN decided to release the
Speaker 1: web to the general public, meaning they made the information
Speaker 1: itself on how the web works public and open. Along
Speaker 1: with the open license for the web. CERN offered a
Speaker 1: basic browser and a library of code to help things
Speaker 1: move along, and it didn't take long for other organizations
Speaker 1: and eventually people and companies to join in. So also
Speaker 1: in nine three, the National Center for super Computing Applications
Speaker 1: or in c s A released Mosaic one point Oh,
Speaker 1: and that became the first web browser to really find
Speaker 1: popularity among the general public. At this point, most of
Speaker 1: the people using the web were still researchers and students,
Speaker 1: but gradually people outside of these groups began to learn
Speaker 1: of the web. It started to get press coverage, and
Speaker 1: people began to get excited by this concept of a
Speaker 1: computer network that you could access and find real information
Speaker 1: and communicate with people in real time. And here's a
Speaker 1: funny note. During this time, I was in college and
Speaker 1: my first impression of the Web at that time was
Speaker 1: that it was slow, and it was unattractive and it
Speaker 1: was superfluous. I had become used to browsing the Internet
Speaker 1: using other means like tel net to connect to chat
Speaker 1: rooms or games or whatever, or even uh not full
Speaker 1: Internet access, things like bolletin board systems, and I just
Speaker 1: thought that the graphical approach to the Web was completely
Speaker 1: unnecessary and slow things down. The browser had to take
Speaker 1: time to get the information and render the stuff you
Speaker 1: needed to see, and at the time, the Internet connectivity
Speaker 1: and the power of computers meant that that stuff took ages.
Speaker 1: And I just thought, well, who wants to sit around
Speaker 1: forever to try and get this information when you could
Speaker 1: get it so much faster using FTP or tell net
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be, depending upon the kind of
Speaker 1: information you're interested in. So I thought the web was
Speaker 1: probably a flash in the pan. It would not be
Speaker 1: the last time I'd be radically wrong about the technology.
Speaker 1: You think I'd learned at any rate, by the web
Speaker 1: was making headlines and e commerce became a thing. One
Speaker 1: of the earliest examples I could find was that Pizza
Speaker 1: Hut sold a pizza online, actually allowing customers to order
Speaker 1: pizza in some areas using the web. The company Yahoo
Speaker 1: was founded around this time too, and its main purpose
Speaker 1: at that time was to serve as just a search
Speaker 1: engine to help search for the content on the web,
Speaker 1: making it easier for people to find stuff they wanted.
Speaker 1: Before search engines, it was pretty tough. You had to
Speaker 1: be kind of you kind of had to be part
Speaker 1: of the that understood how the web worked. Now today,
Speaker 1: we're all used to things like you r l s
Speaker 1: where you have to type in a web address. In fact,
Speaker 1: there may be a couple of websites that you still
Speaker 1: navigate to by typing in the web address, but not
Speaker 1: everyone is comfortable with that, so search engines made it
Speaker 1: much easier for people to interact with the Web without
Speaker 1: having to memorize the protocol that they would need in
Speaker 1: order to visit a specific website. Now, much later than
Speaker 1: the early nineties, we look back on the websites of
Speaker 1: this era as being pre Web two point oh. For
Speaker 1: the most part, you could probably call them web one
Speaker 1: point oh. But that's what we call a retronym, meaning
Speaker 1: we named it after the thing had already happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like World War One. While World
Speaker 1: War One was going on, no one referred to it
Speaker 1: as World War One. There had not been a World
Speaker 1: War two yet, there'd be no reason to call it
Speaker 1: world War one unless you expected there to be another one,
Speaker 1: so you might something else, like the Great War. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was only in in a you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: when World War Two broke out that World War One
Speaker 1: really got that name. So what actually defines Web one
Speaker 1: point oh? For lack of a better term, Not everyone
Speaker 1: even thinks Web one point oh is is a thing
Speaker 1: at all? Like it It doesn't make any sense, but
Speaker 1: some people will use that term, but wasn't actually described well.
Speaker 1: The websites in those days. Most of them were largely
Speaker 1: static pages, which means you would navigate to a page
Speaker 1: and see what was there, and after doing that, there'd
Speaker 1: probably be very little reason to ever return to that
Speaker 1: page because it's going to be pretty much the same. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the equivalent of a magazine or
Speaker 1: a book. You know, if you go and you read
Speaker 1: a magazine and you close the magazine, then you come
Speaker 1: back to it and you open it up to the
Speaker 1: same page, it's going to be the same magazine article.
Speaker 1: It doesn't change from one moment to the next. That's
Speaker 1: the way a lot of web sites were in the
Speaker 1: early days. We'll be back to talk more about what
Speaker 1: web two point oh is after this quick break. Those
Speaker 1: web pages didn't have any way for visitors to have
Speaker 1: any kind of meaningful interaction on the site, and most
Speaker 1: there might be a visitor counter that would click up
Speaker 1: a notch each time someone navigated to the website, and
Speaker 1: those were a huge deal early on. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys remember, but I remember lots of websites
Speaker 1: having a visitor counter, and they took it as a
Speaker 1: matter of pride when they passed a arbitrary milestone like
Speaker 1: five thousand visitors or something like that, but there was
Speaker 1: no way to leave comments or have any other impact
Speaker 1: on the site. For the most part, for these types
Speaker 1: of web pages. Now there were exceptions. Some websites were
Speaker 1: dedicated to updating content regularly, or they were allowing people
Speaker 1: to leave their own contributions, or even both of those things.
Speaker 1: At the same time, there was a student at Swarthmore
Speaker 1: College named Justin Hall who started up a web page
Speaker 1: in and originally it was just a collection of links
Speaker 1: that he thought were particularly interesting. The website was called
Speaker 1: Justin's Links, and not long after he started the site,
Speaker 1: he actually saw the potential to do something more with
Speaker 1: it than just show a collection of links, and he
Speaker 1: sought as a way to publish his thoughts to a
Speaker 1: global audience, kind of like an online journal, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people point to Justin's Links as being the
Speaker 1: first blog uh. This sort of approach of using the
Speaker 1: web as sort of a dynamic communication tool set the
Speaker 1: side apart from a lot of the web pages that
Speaker 1: were around at the same time, but many sites lacked
Speaker 1: that sort of dynamic approach, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: companies began to rush the web in hopes of beating
Speaker 1: competitors to the punch. The web was viewed as kind
Speaker 1: of a Wild West type of territory in which a
Speaker 1: company could stake its claim online and stand to make
Speaker 1: a ton of money in the short term before everyone
Speaker 1: else caught up. Simultaneously, several companies emerged that use the
Speaker 1: web as the very foundation for the company itself. Some
Speaker 1: of them offered goods or services to consumers, so normal
Speaker 1: people who are just using the web themselves. Others were
Speaker 1: targeting other companies and they were offering up services meant
Speaker 1: to help businesses succeed, but many of these lacked any
Speaker 1: sort of cohesive business plan, which caused a big problem.
Speaker 1: They were offering up services that some people found helpful,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have any way of making money. And
Speaker 1: this obviously is not something that has just gone away.
Speaker 1: We've seen this with lots of different services, some of
Speaker 1: which exists solely as a means to try and get
Speaker 1: acquired by other larger businesses. Uh which can work if
Speaker 1: you have a great idea for a service or app
Speaker 1: that people are going to really enjoy using, but you
Speaker 1: don't have a way of generating money from that, it
Speaker 1: might just be good enough to get a lot of
Speaker 1: attention and then wait for someone to offer to buy you.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they'll figure out a way of using it,
Speaker 1: or maybe they'll pair it with stuff they already have,
Speaker 1: and that's how it makes money. But back then, not
Speaker 1: having a plan just wasn't really working for people. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of the ninety nineties, web companies were sprouting
Speaker 1: up all over the place, and investors were really excited
Speaker 1: at the opportunity to get in on the ground floor
Speaker 1: of something that had the potential to become huge, meaning
Speaker 1: you could stand to become a millionaire overnight with some
Speaker 1: of these opportunities, and they began to flood startup companies
Speaker 1: with cash. More than a few of those startup companies
Speaker 1: ended up with way more money than what they needed,
Speaker 1: and that encouraged some bad decisions on the part of founders.
Speaker 1: A lot of founders began to spend that excess cash
Speaker 1: by creating lavish headquarters or crazy benefits for employees. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: their businesses still didn't have a way of making revenue.
Speaker 1: So in other words, let's say that you want to
Speaker 1: open up a lemonade stand, and normally you would just
Speaker 1: need a few dollars to buy some lemons and some sugar,
Speaker 1: you get some water, and then you put all that together.
Speaker 1: Maybe you get a little poster board to write up
Speaker 1: a sign. So maybe you're starting budget is twenty dollars
Speaker 1: and you're selling it for five cents a cup, and
Speaker 1: you figure out that after a certain number of cups,
Speaker 1: you know you've got plenty of of of supply there.
Speaker 1: After a certain number of cups, you're going to break even. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then after that's all profit and you've got enough
Speaker 1: to make a decent profit over your investment. Well, now
Speaker 1: imagine that you are opening up that lemonade stand, but
Speaker 1: someone's given you twenty thousand dollars and you don't have
Speaker 1: any way of scaling up your operation, so you just
Speaker 1: spend that extra money on a really nice lemonade stand
Speaker 1: and you know, a super nifty titanium lemon crusher, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It doesn't help you make money in
Speaker 1: the long run. It just means that's how you spent
Speaker 1: your your startup cash. A lot of companies fell into
Speaker 1: this trap. You can read about startups dot com industries
Speaker 1: in the late nineties and how ridiculously lavish some of
Speaker 1: their offices were, and it was a mess. So compounding
Speaker 1: that problem was the fact that a lot of these
Speaker 1: companies were rewarding employees by giving them shares of the company. Now,
Speaker 1: if everything was working fine, that's great, because those shares
Speaker 1: are worth real money once you get to a point
Speaker 1: where the employees are allowed to sell those shares. Usually
Speaker 1: there's a period where employees are not allowed to do
Speaker 1: that sort of thing until they get to a particular
Speaker 1: point in the fiscal year. But here's where the real
Speaker 1: problems came in, because a lot of these companies began
Speaker 1: to falter when people realized, hey, they don't really have
Speaker 1: a way of making money and they can only keep
Speaker 1: treading water with investment money for so long before everything
Speaker 1: falls apart. And it was like a house of cards.
Speaker 1: It all fell down, and it didn't all fall down
Speaker 1: on a single day. It's not like there's a particular
Speaker 1: day you can point to and say this is the
Speaker 1: day the bubble burst, the bubble meaning this speculation bubble
Speaker 1: of the value of dot com companies. Instead, it happened
Speaker 1: over a course of years from two thousand one essentially,
Speaker 1: and during that time people began to get more suspicious
Speaker 1: of dot com companies that began to ask harder questions.
Speaker 1: The companies themselves were starting to run out of that
Speaker 1: investment money, and because they hadn't found a way to
Speaker 1: generate enough revenue, they couldn't stay afloat, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them went completely out of business. Some of them
Speaker 1: took serious hits to their value. Amazon dot Com, for example,
Speaker 1: was around in those days and for a while had
Speaker 1: shares the were in the triple digit value, like over
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars a share, but after the bubble burst
Speaker 1: it dropped to less than ten dollars a share. Huge drop.
Speaker 1: But companies like Amazon were large enough and and savvy
Speaker 1: enough to wade through that time and emerge out the
Speaker 1: other side. Not all companies were so lucky, and the
Speaker 1: worst part of this is that those employees who had
Speaker 1: worked so hard and had been rewarded in stock now
Speaker 1: found themselves with worthless stock. The companies were bankrupt, so
Speaker 1: the shares were not worth anything, and that was a
Speaker 1: huge issue. So you had all these people who, for
Speaker 1: a while, on paper, were millionaires and then suddenly they
Speaker 1: were broke, or at least they weren't millionaires anymore. Many
Speaker 1: dot com companies went on to business um and those
Speaker 1: that stayed around, people wanted to try and figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what what set them apart, what made them different? How
Speaker 1: did these companies survive, How did these website it's make
Speaker 1: it through the dot com bubble burst while so many
Speaker 1: others went away. And that's where the term web two
Speaker 1: point oh really comes into play. Now, personally, I think
Speaker 1: it's a dumb term. It's terrible. It suggests a chronological order,
Speaker 1: So it would suggest that there was first Web one
Speaker 1: point oh and then at some point there was a
Speaker 1: Web two point oh release. Because it's very similar to
Speaker 1: the way we look at software. For example, we're operating systems.
Speaker 1: But that's not what this means. It's not the way
Speaker 1: it works. So I think it's ultimately more confusing than helpful.
Speaker 1: But that's what we have, uh. And the truth is
Speaker 1: that both websites that were more in the Web one
Speaker 1: point oh frame than the Web two point oh frame
Speaker 1: and Web two point o websites existed at the same time.
Speaker 1: In other words, this wasn't chronological. You can't point to
Speaker 1: a date and say after this time all the websites
Speaker 1: were Web two point oh. Even with Justin's links, we
Speaker 1: start seeing Web two point oh philosophy working its way
Speaker 1: into websites. And that was years before the dot com
Speaker 1: bubble burst. So it's problematic using this term, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, we need to look at what actually happened,
Speaker 1: like why is this term around in the first place,
Speaker 1: And that's because of the O'Reilly Media company. So in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, Tim O'Reilly who was the founder of
Speaker 1: O'Reilly Media, and Dale Dougherty, who was a VP and
Speaker 1: O'Reilly we're having a brainstorming session. They were trying to
Speaker 1: come up with a an event that could really focus
Speaker 1: on what makes a web company successful? Why were some
Speaker 1: web companies able to survive while so many others failed.
Speaker 1: What were the mistakes that the older websites made or
Speaker 1: the failed websites made, and what were the success stories?
Speaker 1: And so they started trying to think, well, how are
Speaker 1: we going to define what's the what's the way we
Speaker 1: create a catchy term to explain the new philosophy of
Speaker 1: the web the one that survived. And that's where they
Speaker 1: came up with the term web two point oh. And
Speaker 1: that was it. It was just to give a name
Speaker 1: to a summit, the Web two point oh Summit, which
Speaker 1: took place in two thousand four, and they had several
Speaker 1: since then, but they just wanted a way to say
Speaker 1: these are the type of websites that did all right
Speaker 1: throughout the dot com bubble verse. These are the ones
Speaker 1: that had the traits that allowed them to survive. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, the qualities that define web two point oh
Speaker 1: are that they tend to be dynamic pages rather than
Speaker 1: static ones, meaning that there's a reason for you to
Speaker 1: go back and look at it again. It's not something
Speaker 1: that's going to be a page out of the encyclopedia
Speaker 1: and it never ever changes. That makes it web two
Speaker 1: point oh. Another is that there tends to be some
Speaker 1: way for users to generate content and submitted to the website.
Speaker 1: That may be something along the lines of blogging, where
Speaker 1: the users are journaling using the web page as a
Speaker 1: place for their journal to go. Or it might be
Speaker 1: social media site where they're just reaching out to friends
Speaker 1: or sharing links or stories or jokes or whatever. Or
Speaker 1: it might be something more akin to Amazon, where users
Speaker 1: are able to review products that they've purchased, and that
Speaker 1: adds value to Amazon because future customers can look at
Speaker 1: those reviews and make judgments, and then they too can
Speaker 1: contribute to this system, and that makes the whole experience
Speaker 1: of using Amazon more pleasant and robust and useful to
Speaker 1: both the company and the consumer. These are the sort
Speaker 1: of things that became known as the web two point
Speaker 1: oh qualities. This dynamic approach with user generated content, stuff
Speaker 1: that could be syndicated and be sent out across multiple platforms.
Speaker 1: All of that was wrapped up in this and like
Speaker 1: I said, it does in fact cover things like social
Speaker 1: media sites. If you look back on the timeline of
Speaker 1: the major social media sites, they all emerged after the
Speaker 1: dot com bubble burst. There really weren't any sites that
Speaker 1: kind of fall into that social media category the way
Speaker 1: we think of today pre dot com bubble bursts. Some
Speaker 1: of them were around right around then, like live journal,
Speaker 1: but even then you would you could argue live journal
Speaker 1: was more of a blogging site and less of a
Speaker 1: social media site. Things like Friendster and MySpace and Facebook,
Speaker 1: all of those emerged after the dot Com bubble burst,
Speaker 1: but they also embraced the philosophy of what O'Reilly was
Speaker 1: calling web two point oh because those sites they aren't
Speaker 1: valuable on their own. I mean, you don't go to
Speaker 1: Facebook to see what Facebook has put up. You go
Speaker 1: to Facebook to see what your friends are saying, or
Speaker 1: to say something to your friends. It's the people who
Speaker 1: are using the site that give it value, and that's
Speaker 1: a big part of Web two point oh it and
Speaker 1: in fact, it takes a lot of the pressure off
Speaker 1: of the person creating the website. They have to make
Speaker 1: it attractive enough for people to adopt it, but then
Speaker 1: you just let the people make it important and you
Speaker 1: step back. Same thing is true for Twitter. Twitter just
Speaker 1: facilitates communication. It's the people using Twitter that make it useful.
Speaker 1: If no one had jumped on Twitter, it wouldn't be around.
Speaker 1: There are other services that were similar to Twitter, some
Speaker 1: of which people thought were superior to Twitter, but they
Speaker 1: didn't get adopted as quickly, and they, for the most part,
Speaker 1: are not around anymore. We have a bit more to
Speaker 1: say about Web two point oh after this quick commercial break.
Speaker 1: So Web two point oh kind of points to this
Speaker 1: idea of embracing the consumer as a an integral part
Speaker 1: of your web presence. They're not just an audience. They're
Speaker 1: a contributor in some way. And you could argue the
Speaker 1: web two point oh isn't so much an evolution as
Speaker 1: it is just a different approach to creating an experience
Speaker 1: on the web, which also makes it difficult to talk
Speaker 1: about what comes next. I mean, is there a web
Speaker 1: three point oh? Does that term even mean anything? Now?
Speaker 1: I would argue that we definitely have seen more evolution
Speaker 1: on the web since O'Reilly coined the web two point
Speaker 1: oh term, particularly when it comes to stuff like data
Speaker 1: tracking that's huge, way bigger than it was in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's. Because of data tracking, sites can customize
Speaker 1: a user's experience and serve up advertising that is calculated
Speaker 1: to be more effective for that user. And depending upon
Speaker 1: the implementation in data tracking can be downright scary. And
Speaker 1: it turns out you don't have to share that much
Speaker 1: data before a computer can figure out who you are.
Speaker 1: Stuff that seems really general, like just a zip code
Speaker 1: can be enough to narrow down just a few candidates.
Speaker 1: So if I put my zip code in and I
Speaker 1: have just maybe two or three other points of data,
Speaker 1: that might be enough for an algorithm to really narrow
Speaker 1: down between me and maybe one or two other people
Speaker 1: who I could possibly be. It's actually pretty, you know, surprising,
Speaker 1: how little information you need to share for that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff to happen. Also, we know that data tracking
Speaker 1: can be misused, either intentionally or not. There's the story
Speaker 1: about Targets sending the young woman uh some, a young
Speaker 1: woman some some coupons for expected mothers, and her father
Speaker 1: found out about it and was really upset at Target
Speaker 1: because he thought they had misidentified her, his daughter, as
Speaker 1: being pregnant. And then later on he found out that
Speaker 1: in fact, she was pregnant. But the whole point of
Speaker 1: that is that Target was trying to be proactive and helpful,
Speaker 1: but in fact caused a ruckus. It was a little
Speaker 1: too overenthusiastic of a response, as it turns out, and
Speaker 1: that's largely due to data tracking. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to identify a person or to create a problem. It's
Speaker 1: not like Target knew specifically who this young lady was.
Speaker 1: They just identified that based upon her searches, she must
Speaker 1: be pregnant. That's a problem. And we're seeing data tracking
Speaker 1: used and everything from innocent or at least seemingly innocent
Speaker 1: approaches like, well, you bought this one product, so here
Speaker 1: are five other products that you will probably like based
Speaker 1: upon your preferences that we've seen so far. That's not
Speaker 1: that creepy, but there are other approaches where data tracking
Speaker 1: is downright sinister, and I would argue that's a major
Speaker 1: part of the web experience now, whether you're aware of
Speaker 1: it or not, but it's definitely something that has evolved
Speaker 1: since Web two point oh. But another real jump in
Speaker 1: the evolution of the Web comes to us because of
Speaker 1: mobile devices. Now. O'Reilly recognized the importance of mobile devices
Speaker 1: all the way back in two thousand four. O'Reilly Media
Speaker 1: said that interoperability was one of the features of Web
Speaker 1: two point oh, one of the cornerstones of the philosophy,
Speaker 1: meaning that you should be able to access this web
Speaker 1: page from multiple platforms, whether it's a computer or a
Speaker 1: mobile device of some sort or something else. Now, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, there were really not that many
Speaker 1: devices that you could use to connect to the web,
Speaker 1: not in a meaningful way. A lot of the phones
Speaker 1: that were out there were more like, you know, they
Speaker 1: have text browsers for the web, so you could read
Speaker 1: some text on certain web pages. It was pretty limited.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the smartphone really took off here in
Speaker 1: the United States. That means it was after the introduction
Speaker 1: of the iPhone that you really started seeing that. So
Speaker 1: you get to a point now where more and more
Speaker 1: people are using mobile devices to access the web. I
Speaker 1: meant that web developers had to make sure they were
Speaker 1: paying closer attention to the mobile experience, because if they
Speaker 1: ignored it, then a larger portion of their audience was
Speaker 1: going to get upset with how how clunky or unpleasant
Speaker 1: it was to access the website using a mobile device.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's more important than ever now. Uh
Speaker 1: just recently, we've seen mobile browsing outpace desktop browsing. In
Speaker 1: other words, more more website visits are coming from mobile
Speaker 1: devices than desktop computers. That happened for the first time
Speaker 1: about a year ago, a little more than a year ago,
Speaker 1: and now we're seeing that more people are using mobile
Speaker 1: devices to access the web. Now, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: people have slacked off of using desktop computers or laptops.
Speaker 1: People still are using those devices. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: look at the trends, they're still increasing year over year.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand fifteen, there are more people accessing
Speaker 1: the web on desktops than there were in two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's just that the growth of mobile devices has skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: so it has outpaced the growth of desktops. So both
Speaker 1: of them are up. It's just mobile devices have increased
Speaker 1: much faster than desktop has. But that means you have
Speaker 1: to pay attention to the experience that your customers have.
Speaker 1: Your audience has both on mobile and on desktop. You
Speaker 1: want to make sure that it is attractive and usable
Speaker 1: and that people are able to get the experience they
Speaker 1: want depending up. You know, no matter what platform they
Speaker 1: happen to be using, whether it's a tab, bublit or
Speaker 1: a smartphone or a console or uh desktop computer, it
Speaker 1: needs to be a satisfying experience. So I would argue
Speaker 1: that is now really a defining feature of the web,
Speaker 1: And if I had to define web three point oh,
Speaker 1: I'd likely argue that it has to do with both
Speaker 1: the data tracking and the mobile devices more than pretty
Speaker 1: much anything else. But web experiences are becoming more customized
Speaker 1: to the individual browsers, So that could mean that one
Speaker 1: day will move into the era of the semantic web. Now,
Speaker 1: the semantic web is where your experience will be very
Speaker 1: much personalized, and the web itself will understand what it
Speaker 1: is you want to see based upon context, word choice,
Speaker 1: your preferences. All of these things that are wrapped up
Speaker 1: in things like data tracking and understanding of natural language,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. We're seeing a lot of development
Speaker 1: in that area. So maybe one day we'll have a
Speaker 1: semantic web where when I talk about surfing the web
Speaker 1: and when you talk about serving the web, it will
Speaker 1: be two very different stories because of our different styles.
Speaker 1: That's a possibility, but I also think it's really likely
Speaker 1: we're going to see the web experience fracture as more
Speaker 1: services attempt to leverage various platforms. Now what do I
Speaker 1: mean by that. It's starting to sound like I'm talking
Speaker 1: business talk, But here's the simple example that I'll use
Speaker 1: to illustrate my point. Think about Netflix. So Netflix streaming
Speaker 1: has seen a ton of success over the past few years.
Speaker 1: Put aside their their library of movies and television series,
Speaker 1: which obviously I mean that's that's problematic, but the adoption
Speaker 1: of Netflix has been phenomenal, and I would argue that
Speaker 1: our large reason for that is because you weren't limited
Speaker 1: to computers or mobile devices to access Netflix. You can
Speaker 1: access it on set top boxes, on video game consoles,
Speaker 1: and more. Pretty much if the device was capable of
Speaker 1: connecting to the Internet. Netflix made sure it could have
Speaker 1: some kind of platform on that device. They wanted to
Speaker 1: get on everything they possibly could, and it meant that
Speaker 1: they had widespread adoption. Beyond that, they were really smart
Speaker 1: on the back end, they built out a system so
Speaker 1: that you could have a kind of seamless experience moving
Speaker 1: from one device to another. So if I start watching
Speaker 1: a movie under my Netflix account on my laptop computer,
Speaker 1: and then I come home and I turned on my
Speaker 1: video game console and I launched my Netflix app, I
Speaker 1: can pick up where I left off because on the
Speaker 1: back end it's tracking everything. The same is true for
Speaker 1: other services like YouTube. It's another great example. There are
Speaker 1: YouTube smartphone apps and tablet apps and video game console apps,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's the same sort of thing. My experience
Speaker 1: on one can translate over to another so that I
Speaker 1: can keep on building out this profile of what like,
Speaker 1: and YouTube will continuously suggest other videos that are similar
Speaker 1: to the ones that I've really enjoyed, which might be
Speaker 1: why I have so many videos of dogs on skateboards,
Speaker 1: or that could just be coincidence. I don't really understand
Speaker 1: how it works behind the scenes. At any rate, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me that that could potentially be the
Speaker 1: new era. It's not so much a web three point
Speaker 1: oh as it could be a let's, you know, let's
Speaker 1: look at how we can make our service across all
Speaker 1: different platforms so people can access it however they want,
Speaker 1: and that goes beyond web. In fact, web might be
Speaker 1: too limited a term to use for that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: which means we kind of need a new term for it.
Speaker 1: We need to come up with a word that explains
Speaker 1: this particular world one where you have these services that
Speaker 1: go across all sorts of platforms, allowing you to access
Speaker 1: it however you like. And I think I've come up
Speaker 1: with a name. I'm calling it Frank. Frank's nice name.
Speaker 1: Robin Day's got a hedgehog called Frank. But seriously, I'd
Speaker 1: rather just kind of ditch the web two point oh
Speaker 1: term altogether, which might be a moot point. I don't
Speaker 1: know that anyone's still talking about web two point oh. Seriously,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a non term at this point. But
Speaker 1: I'd like to just erase it because I think Web
Speaker 1: two point oh was too confusing a term. I think
Speaker 1: it misled people. It compares the Web to things like
Speaker 1: software patches or software versions, and that's not accurate. Um,
Speaker 1: I really wish we could come up with a different
Speaker 1: phrase for that particular idea that doesn't suggest an evolution
Speaker 1: because it really was kind of a divergent path. And
Speaker 1: that wraps it up for the classic episode about web
Speaker 1: two point oh. Like I said, this was a concept
Speaker 1: that largely was developed after things had already kind of evolved,
Speaker 1: where it was more of an observation about the sorts
Speaker 1: of websites that flourished while others kind of withered away. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of codified that kind of in a
Speaker 1: way that Moore's Law codified this idea of the evolution
Speaker 1: of the semiconductor industry and microprocessors. If you would like
Speaker 1: to suggest a future topic of tech Stuff, feel free
Speaker 1: to reach out to me. One way to do that
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Speaker 1: in length, Or you can navigate on over to Twitter
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