Speaker 1: With Technology with Text Stuff from toom. Hey there everyone,
Speaker 1: this is Jonathan with Text Stuff and today I wanted
Speaker 1: to peep back into the past. This is not gonna
Speaker 1: be a rerun episode. This is actually gonna be a
Speaker 1: new episode, but it's a new episode about something that
Speaker 1: tech Stuff has covered before. Back in Chris Pallette and
Speaker 1: I did an episode about what is web two point oh?
Speaker 1: But I think we've had enough time since then to
Speaker 1: really take a look back and explore what the concept
Speaker 1: of web two point oh was and what if anything
Speaker 1: is taking its place, and does the term mean anything
Speaker 1: wasn't just kind of a placeholder. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of opinion in this because it's from my own
Speaker 1: personal perspective. But honestly, if you've heard the term web
Speaker 1: two point oh and you always wondered what that meant,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to cover today. But to start off,
Speaker 1: we need to look at a history of the Web itself.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you all know that the Web and
Speaker 1: the Internet are two different things, but just in case,
Speaker 1: let's lay down that groundwork. Now. The Internet refers to
Speaker 1: the network of networks, this gigantic network of computer networks
Speaker 1: that are all interconnected together. There's a series of connections
Speaker 1: that allows computers to communicate with one another. So this
Speaker 1: is an enormous system that allows all kinds of different
Speaker 1: types of communication to go across it. And back in
Speaker 1: the day, we used to talk about the Internet in
Speaker 1: the terms of the information super Highway. You might be
Speaker 1: familiar with that term. So it was kind of the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that allowed rapid communication across the globe and allowed
Speaker 1: people who were on one computer network to communicate directly
Speaker 1: with who are on a totally separate computer network. Because
Speaker 1: of this interconnectivity. Now the Web is just one way
Speaker 1: to send and consume information on that super highway. So
Speaker 1: you can think of it as a vehicle 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 M 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 has done through a visual interface. In other words,
Speaker 1: you've got something rendered out as uh uh, you know,
Speaker 1: something that's easy to to interpret and consume within the browser,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a text based approach that is, you know,
Speaker 1: marred by lots of code that might be really confusing
Speaker 1: to you. Now, the path taken by your request and
Speaker 1: the returning information isn't set in stone, so this is
Speaker 1: different from roads. This is where the road analogy really
Speaker 1: breaks down, because if you have a set of roads
Speaker 1: between you and your destination, you might be able to
Speaker 1: take a detour or perhaps two detours if things are
Speaker 1: really bad. Let's say there's flooding, you can't get to
Speaker 1: where you were going using your normal routes. But the
Speaker 1: way the Internet goes it's way more robust than that.
Speaker 1: The information is delivered via packets. The packets all can
Speaker 1: travel different pathways to get to their destination, whereupon everything
Speaker 1: gets put back together and displayed for you. Now that's
Speaker 1: not just for Web information. That's for all information going
Speaker 1: across the Internet traffic. But it's uh. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the Internet is so useful. It's that you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry if there is a break in
Speaker 1: the communication lines between you and the web server because
Speaker 1: the data can route around. That very important if you
Speaker 1: have machines that are constantly going on and offline. So
Speaker 1: back to the web. Now, the birthplace of the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web is CERN. That's the same organization that oversees
Speaker 1: the large had drawn colliders. So we're talking particle physics
Speaker 1: and lull cats all because of CERN. Thanks TERN, specifically
Speaker 1: say thanks to Tim berners Lee, who developed what would
Speaker 1: become the basis of the World Wide Web on the
Speaker 1: next computer and uh, in case you're an 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 logg
Speaker 1: in 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, n That's when uh CERN decided to release
Speaker 1: the web to the general public, meaning they made the
Speaker 1: information itself on how the web works public and open.
Speaker 1: Along with the open license for the Web, CERN offered
Speaker 1: a basic browser and a library of code to help
Speaker 1: things move along, and it didn't take long for other
Speaker 1: organizations and eventually people and companies to join in. So
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen three, the National Center for super Computing
Speaker 1: Applications or in cs 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 bulletin 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: need 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 click that understood how the web worked. Now
Speaker 1: today 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 use something else like the Great War. Uh.
Speaker 1: And It was only in in a you know, in
Speaker 1: retrospect when World War two broke out, that World War
Speaker 1: One really got that name. So what actually defines web
Speaker 1: one point oh? For lack of a better term, Not
Speaker 1: everyone even thinks web one point oh is is a
Speaker 1: thing at all? Like it? It doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: but some people will use that term, but wasn't actually
Speaker 1: described well. The websites in those days. Most of them
Speaker 1: were largely static pages, which means you would navigate to
Speaker 1: a page and see what was there, and after doing that,
Speaker 1: there'd probably be very little reason to ever return to
Speaker 1: that 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 gonna be the same magazine article. It
Speaker 1: doesn't change from one moment to the next. That's the
Speaker 1: way a lot of websites were in the early days.
Speaker 1: Those web pages didn't have any way for visitors to
Speaker 1: have any kind of meaningful interaction on the site. At 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
Speaker 1: things at the same time. There was a student at
Speaker 1: Swarthmore College named Justin Hall who started up a web
Speaker 1: page in 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: site 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 us 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. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, let's say that you want to open
Speaker 1: up a lemonade stand, and normally you would just need
Speaker 1: 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 soup, a nifty titanium lemon crusher,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It doesn't help you make money
Speaker 1: in the long run. It just means that's how you
Speaker 1: spent your your startup cash. A lot of companies fell
Speaker 1: into this trap. You can read about startups dot com
Speaker 1: industries in the late nineties and how ridiculously lavish some
Speaker 1: of their offices were, and it was a mess. So
Speaker 1: compounding that problem was the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: these companies were rewarding employees by giving them shares of
Speaker 1: the company. Now, if everything was working, fine, that's great,
Speaker 1: because those shares are worth real money once you get
Speaker 1: to a point where the employees are allowed to sell
Speaker 1: those shares. Usually there's a period where employees are not
Speaker 1: allowed to do that sort of thing until they get
Speaker 1: to a particular point in the fiscal year. But here's
Speaker 1: where the real problems came in because a lot of
Speaker 1: these companies began to falter when people realized, hey, they
Speaker 1: don't really have a way of making money and they
Speaker 1: can only keep treading water with investment money for so
Speaker 1: long before everything falls apart. And it was like a
Speaker 1: house of cards. It all fell down, and it didn't
Speaker 1: all fall down on a single day. It's not like
Speaker 1: there's a particular day you can point to and say
Speaker 1: this is the day the bubble burst, the bubble meaning
Speaker 1: this speculation bubble of the value of dot com companies. Instead,
Speaker 1: it happened over a course of years from two thousand
Speaker 1: one essentially, and during that time people began to get
Speaker 1: more suspicious of dot com companies that began to ask
Speaker 1: harder questions. The companies themselves were starting to run out
Speaker 1: of that investment money, and because they hadn't found a
Speaker 1: way to generate enough revenue, they couldn't stay afloat, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them went completely out of business. Some
Speaker 1: of them took serious hits to their value. Amazon dot Com,
Speaker 1: for example, was around in those days and for a
Speaker 1: while had shares that were in the triple digit value,
Speaker 1: like over a hundred dollars of share, but after the
Speaker 1: bubble burst it dropped to less than ten dollars a share,
Speaker 1: huge drop. But companies like Amazon were large enough and
Speaker 1: and savvy enough to wade through that time and emerge
Speaker 1: out the other side. Not all companies were so lucky,
Speaker 1: and the worst part of this is that those employees
Speaker 1: who had worked so hard and had been rewarded in
Speaker 1: stock now found themselves with worthless stock. The companies were bankrupt,
Speaker 1: so the shares were not worth anything, and that was
Speaker 1: a huge issue. So you had all these people who,
Speaker 1: for a while on paper were millionaires and then suddenly
Speaker 1: they were broke, or at least they weren't millionaires anymore.
Speaker 1: Many dot com companies went on to business um and
Speaker 1: those 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 websites make it
Speaker 1: through the dot com bubble burst while so many others
Speaker 1: went away? And that's where the term web two point
Speaker 1: oh really comes into play. Now. Personally, I think it's
Speaker 1: 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 back in with Justin's Links,
Speaker 1: we start seeing 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 this, what's the what's the way
Speaker 1: we create a catchy term to explain the new philosophy
Speaker 1: of the web, the one that survived, And that's where
Speaker 1: they came up with the term web two point oh.
Speaker 1: And that was it. It was just to give a
Speaker 1: name to a summit, the Web two point oh Summit,
Speaker 1: which took place in two thousand four, and they had
Speaker 1: several 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 submit it to
Speaker 1: the website. That may be something along the lines of blogging,
Speaker 1: where the users are journaling using the web page as
Speaker 1: a place for their journal to go, or it might
Speaker 1: be social media site where they're just reaching out to
Speaker 1: friends or sharing links or stories or jokes or whatever.
Speaker 1: Or it might be something more akin to Amazon, where
Speaker 1: users are able to review products that they've purchased, and
Speaker 1: that adds value to Amazon because future customers can look
Speaker 1: at those reviews and make judgments, and then they too
Speaker 1: can contribute to this system, and that makes the whole
Speaker 1: experience of using Amazon more pleasant and robust and useful
Speaker 1: to both the company and the consumer. These are the
Speaker 1: sort of things that became known as the web two
Speaker 1: point oh qualities, This dynamic approach with user generated content,
Speaker 1: stuff that could be syndicated and be sent out across
Speaker 1: multiple platforms. All of that was wrapped up in this
Speaker 1: and like I said, it does in fact cover things
Speaker 1: like social media sites. If you look back on the
Speaker 1: timeline of the major social media sites, they all emerged
Speaker 1: after the dot com bubble burst. There really weren't any
Speaker 1: sites that kind of fall into that social media category
Speaker 1: the way we think of today pre dot Com bubble burst.
Speaker 1: Some 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 friends to 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 some thing to your friends. It's the people
Speaker 1: who are using the site that give it value, and
Speaker 1: that's a big part of web two point oh it
Speaker 1: and in fact, it takes a lot of the pressure
Speaker 1: off of the person creating the website. They have to
Speaker 1: make it attractive enough for people to adopt it, but
Speaker 1: then you just let the people make it important and
Speaker 1: you step back. Same thing is true for Twitter. Twitter
Speaker 1: just facilitates communication. It's the people using Twitter that make
Speaker 1: it useful. If no one had jumped on Twitter, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be around. There are other services that were similar
Speaker 1: to Twitter, some of which people thought were superior to Twitter,
Speaker 1: but they didn't get adopted as quickly, and they, for
Speaker 1: the most part, are not around anymore. So Web two
Speaker 1: point oh kind of points to this idea of embracing
Speaker 1: the consumer as a an integral part of your web presence.
Speaker 1: They're not just an audience, They're a contributor in some way.
Speaker 1: And you could argue that Web two point oh is
Speaker 1: so much an evolution as it is just a different
Speaker 1: approach to creating an experience on the web, which also
Speaker 1: makes it difficult to talk about what comes next. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a web three point oh? Does that term
Speaker 1: even mean anything? Now? I would argue that we definitely
Speaker 1: have seen more evolution on the web since O'Reilly coined
Speaker 1: the web two point oh term, particularly when it comes
Speaker 1: to stuff like data tracking that's huge, way bigger than
Speaker 1: it was in the mid two thousand's. Because of data tracking,
Speaker 1: sites can customize a user's experience and serve up advertising
Speaker 1: that is calculated to be more effective for that user.
Speaker 1: And depending upon the implementation, data tracking can be downright scary.
Speaker 1: And it turns out you don't have to share that
Speaker 1: much 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 new 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'Riley Media
Speaker 1: said that interoperability was one of the features of Web
Speaker 1: two point one of the cornerstones of the philosophy, meaning
Speaker 1: that you should be able to access this web page
Speaker 1: from multiple platforms, whether it's a computer or a mobile
Speaker 1: device of some sort or something else. Now, in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, there were really not that many devices
Speaker 1: that you could use to connect to the Web, not
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. A lot of the phones that
Speaker 1: were out there were more like, you know, they have
Speaker 1: text browsers for the web, so you could read some
Speaker 1: text on certain web pages, it was pretty limited. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the smartphone really took off here in the
Speaker 1: United States. That means it was after the introduction of
Speaker 1: the iPhone that you really started seeing that. So you
Speaker 1: get to a point now where more and more people
Speaker 1: are using mobile devices to access the web. I meant
Speaker 1: that web developers had to make sure they were paying
Speaker 1: closer attention to the mobile experience because if they ignored it,
Speaker 1: then a larger portion of their audience was going to
Speaker 1: get upset with how how clunky or unpleasant it was
Speaker 1: to access the website using a mobile device. And in fact,
Speaker 1: it's more important than ever now. Uh, just recently, we've
Speaker 1: seen mobile browsing outpace desktop browsing. In other words, more
Speaker 1: more website visits are coming from mobile devices than desktop computers.
Speaker 1: That happened for the first time about a year ago,
Speaker 1: a little more than a year ago, and now we're
Speaker 1: seeing that more people are using mobile devices to access
Speaker 1: the web. Now, that doesn't mean that people have slacked
Speaker 1: off of using desktop computers or laptops. People still are
Speaker 1: using those devices. In fact, if you look at the trends,
Speaker 1: they're still increasing year over year. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: fifth teen, there are more people accessing the web on
Speaker 1: desktops than there were in two thousand fourteen. It's just
Speaker 1: that the growth of mobile devices has skyrocketed, so it
Speaker 1: has outpaced the growth of desktops, so both of them
Speaker 1: are up. It's just mobile devices have increased much faster
Speaker 1: than desktop has. But that means you have to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the experience that your customers have. Your audience
Speaker 1: has both on mobile and on desktop. You want to
Speaker 1: make sure that it is attractive and usable and that
Speaker 1: people are able to get the experience they want depending up.
Speaker 1: You know, no matter what platform they happen to be using,
Speaker 1: whether it's a tablet or a smartphone, or a console
Speaker 1: or uh desktop computer, it needs to be a satisfying experience.
Speaker 1: So I would argue that is now really a defining
Speaker 1: feature of the web, And if I had to define
Speaker 1: web three point oh, I'd likely argue that it has
Speaker 1: to do with both the data tracking and the mobile
Speaker 1: devices more than pretty much anything else. But web experiences
Speaker 1: are becoming more customized to the individual browsers, so that
Speaker 1: could mean that one day will move into the era
Speaker 1: of the semantic web. Now the semantic web is where
Speaker 1: your experience will be very much personalized, and the web
Speaker 1: itself will understand what it is you want to see
Speaker 1: based upon context, word choice, your preferences, all of these
Speaker 1: things that are wrapped up in things like data tracking
Speaker 1: and understanding of natural language, that kind of stuff. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of development in that area. So maybe
Speaker 1: one day we'll have a semantic web where when I
Speaker 1: talk about surfing the web and when you talk about
Speaker 1: serving the web, it will be two very different stories
Speaker 1: because of our different styles. That's a possibility, but I
Speaker 1: also think it's really likely we're gonna see the web
Speaker 1: experience fracture as more services attempt to leverage various platforms.
Speaker 1: Now what do I mean by that. It's starting to
Speaker 1: sound like I'm talking business talk. But here's the simple
Speaker 1: example that I'll use to illustrate my point. Think about Netflix.
Speaker 1: So Netflix streaming has seen a ton of success over
Speaker 1: the past few years. Put aside their their library of
Speaker 1: movies and television series, which obviously I mean, that's that's problematic,
Speaker 1: but the adoption of Netflix has been phenomenal, and I
Speaker 1: would argue that our large reason for that is because
Speaker 1: you weren't limited to computers or mobile devices to access Netflix.
Speaker 1: You can access it on set top boxes, on video
Speaker 1: game consoles, and more. Pretty much if the device was
Speaker 1: capable of connecting to the internet. Netflix made sure it
Speaker 1: could have some kind of platform on that device. They
Speaker 1: wanted to get on everything they possibly could, and it
Speaker 1: meant that they had widespread adoption. Beyond that, they were
Speaker 1: really smart on the back end, built out a system
Speaker 1: so that you could have a kind of seamless experience
Speaker 1: moving from one device to another. So if I start
Speaker 1: watching a movie under my Netflix account on my laptop computer,
Speaker 1: and then I come home and I turn 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 I like,
Speaker 1: and YouTube will continuously suggest other videos that are similar
Speaker 1: to ones that I've really enjoyed, which might be why
Speaker 1: I have so many videos of dogs on skateboards or
Speaker 1: that could just be coincidence. I don't really understand how
Speaker 1: it works behind the scenes at any rate. It's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me that that could potentially be the new era.
Speaker 1: It's not so much a Web three point oh as
Speaker 1: it could be a let's, you know, let's look at
Speaker 1: how we can make our service across all different platforms
Speaker 1: so people can access it however they want, and that
Speaker 1: goes beyond Web. In fact, Web might be too limited
Speaker 1: a term to use for that sort of thing, which
Speaker 1: 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 I was too confusing a term. I think
Speaker 1: it misled people. It it compares the web to things
Speaker 1: like 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, not
Speaker 1: so much that one evolved into the other, but one
Speaker 1: approach was more successful than the other. But I'm not
Speaker 1: in charge of such things, so I guess web two
Speaker 1: point I was what will end up calling it forever,
Speaker 1: even if we're just talking about the past. But what
Speaker 1: do you guys think was the term web two point
Speaker 1: oh ever really relevant? Do you think I'm totally off
Speaker 1: base here? And what would you call the current era
Speaker 1: of the web what we have right now? Would that
Speaker 1: be web three point or would you prefer to call
Speaker 1: it something else? Do you have a thing in mind?
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Write me
Speaker 1: at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: I use tech stuff h s W at all three
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you guys again really soon for
Speaker 1: more on this and bathands of other topics because it
Speaker 1: has stuff. Works dot Com