WEBVTT - RERUN: What was Web 2.0? 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:14.000 Stuff Works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.040 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:18.960 How Stuff Works in my Heart Radio and I love 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.799 all things tech. And today we're going to listen to 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.920 another classic episode. Because I'm still on vacation, I will 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.760 be back very soon, but today we're going to look 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.800 back on what was a real big buzzword or I 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:36.400 guess buzz phrase back in the day, which was web 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.560 two point oh that was used to describe lots of stuff. 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.840 It was a fairly vague term. So in this episode 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:47.560 I go into explain what was web two point oh? 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:50.040 What was the whole concept behind that. I hope you 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:54.600 enjoy this classic episode what is web two point oh? 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:56.640 But I think we've had enough time since then to 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.200 really take a look back and explore what the concept 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.280 of web two point was and what if anything is 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.560 taking its place, and does the term mean anything? Was 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.600 it just kind of a placeholder. It's gonna be a 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.319 lot of opinion in this because it's from my own 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.000 personal perspective, but honestly, if you've heard the term web 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.319 two point oh, and you always wondered what that meant. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.720 That's what I want to cover today. But to start off, 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.000 we need to look at a history of the web itself. 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.440 And I'm sure you all know that the Web and 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.919 the Internet are two different things, but just in case, 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.120 let's lay down that groundwork. Now, the Internet refers to 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:43.039 the network of networks, this gigantic network of computer networks 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.319 that are all interconnected together. There's a series of connections 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:50.280 that allows computers to communicate with one another. So this 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:55.000 is an enormous system that allows all kinds of different 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:59.240 types of communication to go across it. And back in 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.600 the day, we used to talk about the Internet in 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.760 the terms of the information super highway. You might be 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.640 familiar with that term. So it was kind of the 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:13.640 infrastructure that allowed rapid communication across the globe and allowed 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:18.160 people who were on one computer network to communicate directly 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.480 with people who are on a totally separate computer network 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.839 because of this interconnectivity. Now the Web is just one 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:28.480 way to send and consume information on that super highway. 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:30.760 So you can think of it as a vehicle that 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.440 shares the super highway with other vehicles. So the Web 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.760 would be like a giant bus. And then you might 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.320 have a freight train that's or not freight train, but 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:42.480 a freight truck that's driving right next to it. That's 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:47.280 file transfer protocol, or a bunch of mail vehicles in 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.520 a I L that would stand for email, that kind 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.000 of stuff. These would all be traveling along the Internet. 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.760 None of them are the Internet. They're just a means 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.720 of communication that exists because the Internet is the platform 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:05.440 upon which they exist. So you access the Web through 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.480 a web browser. Big shock there, I'm sure we usually 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.280 refer to that as the client. Your machine with the 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.200 web browser is the client, and the browser or client 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:20.400 lets you request information from another machine on the Internet, 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:24.240 which we call a server. The server receives your request 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.040 in response to it sends the relevant data back to you. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.359 And all of that has done through a visual interface. 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:35.480 In other words, you've got something rendered out as uh, 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.120 you know, something that's easy to to interpret and consume 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:44.200 within the browser, as opposed to a text based approach 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.720 that is, you know, marred by lots of code that 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.320 might be really confusing to you. Now, the path taken 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.280 by your request and the returning information isn't set in stone, 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.040 so this is different from roads. This is where the 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:02.160 road analogy really breaks down, because if you have a 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.800 set of roads between you and your destination, you might 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.880 be able to take a detour, or perhaps two detours. 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.480 If things are really bad, let's say there's flooding, you 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.120 can't get to where you are going using your normal routes. 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:17.960 But the way the Internet goes it's way more robust 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:23.400 than that. The information is delivered via packets. The packets 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.320 all can travel different pathways to get to their destination, 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.920 whereupon everything gets put back together and displayed for you. 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.120 Now that's not just for Web information. That's for all 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.960 information going across the Internet traffic. But it's uh one 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.360 of the reasons why the Internet is so useful. It's 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:42.800 that you don't have to worry if there is a 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.000 break in the communication lines between you and the web 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:50.120 server because the data can route around. That very important 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.240 if you have machines that are constantly going on and offline. 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:55.840 So back to the web. Now, the birthplace of the 0:04:55.880 --> 0:05:00.159 World Wide Web is CERN. That's the same organization that 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:04.000 oversees the large hadron colliders. So we're talking particle physics 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:08.680 and loll cats all because of CERN. Thanks CERN specifically 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.720 say thanks to Tim berners Lee, who developed what would 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:16.360 become the basis of the Worldwide Web on a Next computer. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:19.800 And uh, in case you're not familiar with what Next 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.800 is or was, really, it was a computer platform developed 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.919 by Steve Jobs after he had been forced from Apple. 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.320 So Apple forced Steve Jobs out of the company or 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.920 Steve Jobs quit, depending upon the person telling the story, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.279 and as a result, Steve Jobs then went on to 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.240 found a new company called Next and develop a new 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:45.479 type of computer. Eventually he would come back to Apple. Essentially, 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.640 Apple begged Steve Jobs to return just as Apple was 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.520 on the brink of bankruptcy, and Next kind of faded away. 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.200 But it was the Next computer that Tim burners Lee 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.240 was using to develop web pages and the first web browser. 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.720 In fact, the first website was built in nine by 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.680 Tim berners Lee, and he hosted it on his own computer. 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.600 That site contained information about the purpose and structure of 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.159 the web, so kind of an explanation of what the 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.320 web would be capable of, and also a set of 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:19.880 instructions on how to create your own web server, because 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:23.000 obviously the web is only really useful if other people 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.480 start to join on Otherwise it's just kind of a 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:29.800 you know, you just logging remotely to someone else's computer. 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.360 It's not that exciting now. The browser he built was 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.000 called Worldwide Web. Just where we get that from, and 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:41.159 things continued along a lot of research centers and students 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.080 began to get access to the world Wide Web. But 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:49.719 things really took off on April three. That's when uh 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.560 CERN decided to release the Web to the general public, 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.640 meaning they made the information itself on how the web 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.120 works public and open. Along with the open license for 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.120 the Web, SERN offered a basic browser and a library 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:05.680 of code to help things move along, and it didn't 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:09.000 take long for other organizations and eventually people and companies 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:13.760 to join in. So also in three, the National Center 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:18.480 for super Computing Applications or in c s A released 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.920 Mosaic one point oh, and that became the first web 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.920 browser to really find popularity among the general public. At 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.240 this point, most of the people using the web were 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:32.440 still researchers and students, but gradually people outside of these 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.560 groups began to learn of the Web. It started to 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.520 get press coverage, and people began to get excited by 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:41.040 this concept of a computer network that you could access 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.720 and find real information and communicate with people in real time. 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.560 And here's a funny note. During this time, I was 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.920 in college, and my first impression of the Web at 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.840 that time was that it was slow, and it was 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:58.200 unattractive and it was superfluous. I had become used to 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.600 browsing the Internet using other means like tell net to 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:06.000 connect to chat rooms or games or whatever, or even 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:10.400 not full Internet access things like Bolton board systems, and 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.119 I just thought that the graphical approach to the Web 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.400 was completely unnecessary and slow things down. The browser had 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.840 to take time to get the information and render the 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.440 stuff you needed to see, and at the time, the 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.240 Internet connectivity and the power of computers meant that that 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.120 stuff took ages. And I just thought, well, who wants 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.000 to sit around forever to try and get this information 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.760 when you could get it so much faster using FTP 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.200 or tell net or whatever it may be, depending upon 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.920 the kind of information you're interested in. So I thought 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.640 the Web was probably a flash in the pan. It 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.400 would not be the last time I'd be radically wrong 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.720 about the technology you think I'd learned. At any rate, 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.920 by the Web was making headlines and e commerce became 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.880 a thing One of the earliest examples I could find 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:05.520 was that Pizza Hut sold a pizza online, actually allowing 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:09.280 customers to order pizza in some areas using the web. 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:13.240 The company Yahoo was founded around this time too, and 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:15.959 its main purpose at that time was to serve as 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.600 just a search engine to help search for the content 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.040 on the web, making it easier for people to find 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.559 stuff they wanted. Before search engines, it was pretty tough. 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.960 You had to be kind of you kind of had 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.200 to be part of the click that understood how the 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.360 web worked. Now today, we're all used to things like 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:36.520 you r l s where you have to type in 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:38.440 a web address. In fact, there may be a couple 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.839 of websites that you still navigate to by typing in 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.040 the web address, but not everyone is comfortable with that. 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.160 So search engines made it much easier for people to 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.479 interact with the web without having to memorize the protocol 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.439 that they would need in order to visit a specific website. Now, 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.520 much later than the early nineties, we look back on 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.320 the webs sites of this era as being pre Web 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.160 two point oh. For the most part, you could probably 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.720 call them web one point oh, but that's what we 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.080 call a retroonym, meaning we named it after the thing 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.839 had already happened. Uh. And it's kind of like World 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.000 War One. While World War One was going on, no 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.360 one referred to it as World War One. There had 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:23.839 not been a World War two yet, there'd be no 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.960 reason to call it world War one unless you expected 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.440 there to be another one, so you might use something else, 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:34.600 like the Great War. Uh. And it was only in 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:37.240 in a you know, in retrospect, when World War Two 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.520 broke out, that World War One really got that name. 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:45.079 So what actually defines web one point oh? For lack 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.440 of a better term, Not everyone even thinks web one 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:50.719 point oh is is a thing at all? Like it? 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.280 It doesn't make any sense, but some people will use 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:57.240 that term. But wasn't actually described well. The websites in 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:02.200 those days. Most of them were actually static pages, which 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:04.200 means you would navigate to a page and see what 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:07.719 was there, and after doing that, there'd probably be very 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.280 little reason to ever return to that page because it's 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.360 going to be pretty much the same. Uh. It's kind 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.559 of like the equivalent of a magazine or a book. 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:18.880 You know, if you go and you read a magazine 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.800 and you close the magazine, then you come back to it, 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.080 and you open it up to the same page, it's 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.800 going to be the same magazine article. It doesn't change 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:28.960 from one moment to the next. That's the way a 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.200 lot of websites were in the early days. We're gonna 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.439 make this episode even more dynamic and interactive in just 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:45.840 a moment, but first, let's take a quick break. Those 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.880 web pages didn't have any way for visitors to have 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:52.600 any kind of meaningful interaction on the site. At most, 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.920 there might be a visitor counter that would click up 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:59.240 a notch each time someone navigated to the website, and 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.640 those were a huge deal early on. I don't know 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.760 if you guys remember, but I remember lots of websites 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.480 having a visitor counter, and they took it as a 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.880 matter of pride when they passed a arbitrary milestone like 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:14.240 five thousand visitors or something like that. But there was 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:16.720 no way to leave comments or have any other impact 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.200 on the site for the most part for these types 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.240 of web pages. Now there were exceptions. Some websites were 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:28.280 dedicated to updating content regularly, or they were allowing people 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.640 to leave their own contributions, or even both of those 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.520 things at the same time. There was a student at 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:38.160 Swarthmore College named Justin Hall who started up a web page, 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:40.920 and originally it was just a collection of links that 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.520 he thought were particularly interesting. The website was called Justin's Links, 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.040 and not long after he started the site, he actually 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:50.520 saw the potential to do something more with it than 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:53.360 just show a collection of links, and he saw it 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.040 as a way to publish his thoughts to a global audience, 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:58.480 kind of like an online journal, and a lot of 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:03.720 people point to Justin's Links as being the first blog uh. 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.040 This sort of approach of using the web as sort 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:08.920 of a dynamic communication tool set the side apart from 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.000 a lot of the web pages that were around at 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.199 the same time, but many sites lacked that sort of 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.720 dynamic approach, and at the same time, companies began to 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:21.120 rush the web in hopes of beating competitors to the punch. 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.559 The web was viewed as kind of a Wild West 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.120 type of territory in which a company could stake its 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.400 claim online and stand to make a ton of money 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:33.560 in the short term before everyone else caught up. Simultaneously, 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.960 several companies emerged that used the web as the very 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:41.640 foundation for the company itself. Some of them offered goods 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:46.320 or services to consumers, so normal people who are just 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:51.240 using the web themselves. Others were targeting other companies and 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.319 they were offering up services meant to help businesses succeed. 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.800 But many of these lacked any sort of cohesive business plan, 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.559 which caused a big problem. They were offering up services 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.720 that some people found helpful, but they didn't have any 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.680 way of making money. And this obviously is not something 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.600 that's just gone away. We've seen this with lots of 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:15.240 different services, some of which exists solely as a means 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:19.600 to try and get acquired by other larger businesses. UH, 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.960 which can work if you have a great idea for 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.360 a service or app that people are going to really 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:29.720 enjoy using, but you don't have a way of generating 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:33.400 money from that. It might just be good enough to 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:35.560 get a lot of attention and then wait for someone 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:37.920 to offer to buy you. You know, maybe they'll figure 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:39.800 out a way of using it, or maybe they'll pair 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.840 it with stuff they already have, and that's how it 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:48.080 makes money. But back then, not having a plan just 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.000 wasn't really working for people. Towards the end of the 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:57.440 ninety nineties, web companies were sprouting up all over the place, 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.680 and investors were really excited at the opportunity to get 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.640 in on the ground floor of something that had the 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:08.040 potential to become huge, meaning you could stand to become 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.840 a millionaire overnight with some of these opportunities, and they 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.600 began to flood startup companies with cash. More than a 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.240 few of those startup companies ended up with way more 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.880 money than what they needed, and that encouraged some bad 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.240 decisions on the part of founders. A lot of founders 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:31.440 began to spend that excess cash by creating lavish headquarters 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:37.120 or crazy benefits for employees. Meanwhile, their businesses still didn't 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:40.120 have a way of making revenue. So, in other words, 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:42.680 let's say that you want to open up a lemonade stand, 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:45.280 and normally you would just need a few dollars to 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.440 buy some lemons and some sugar. You get some water, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:50.520 and then you put all that together. Maybe you get 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:52.880 a little poster board to write up a sign. So 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:57.080 maybe you're starting budget is twenty dollars and you're selling 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.560 it for cents a cup, and you figure out that 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.800 after certain number of cups, you know you've got plenty 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.720 of of of supply. There after certain number of cups, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.480 you're going to break even. Uh, and then after that's 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.320 all profit and you've got enough to make a decent 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:15.640 profit over your investment. Well, now imagine that you are 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.920 opening up that lemonade stand, but someone's given you twenty 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:23.320 thousand dollars and you don't have any way of scaling 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.800 up your operation, so you just spend that extra money 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:31.240 on a really nice lemonade stand and you know, a 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.760 super nifty titanium lemon crusher, that kind of stuff. It 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:38.160 doesn't help you make money in the long run. It 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.720 just means that's how you spent your your startup cash. 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.840 A lot of companies fell into this trap. You can 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.760 read about startups dot com industries in the late nineties 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:53.680 and how ridiculously lavish some of their offices were, and 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:58.480 it was a mess. So compounding that problem was the 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.359 fact that a lot of these companies were rewarding employees 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.680 by giving them shares of the company. Now, if everything 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.560 was working, fine, that's great, because those shares are worth 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:11.600 real money. Once you get to a point where the 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.560 employees are allowed to sell those shares, usually there's a 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.320 period where employees are not allowed to do that sort 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.320 of thing until they get to a particular point in 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:26.119 the fiscal year. But here's where the real problems came in, 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.440 because a lot of these companies began to falter when 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.720 people realized, hey, they don't really have a way of 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.120 making money and they can only keep treading water with 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.119 investment money for so long before everything falls apart. And 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.240 it was like a house of cards. It all fell down, 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:46.080 and it didn't all fall down on a single day. 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.080 It's not like there's a particular day you can point 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.479 to and say this is the day the bubble burst, 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.600 the bubble meaning this speculation bubble of the value of 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:59.080 dot com companies. Instead, it happened over a course of 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:03.680 years from nine thousand one essentially, and during that time, 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.600 people began to get more suspicious of dot com companies 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.760 that began to ask harder questions. The companies themselves were 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.480 starting to run out of that investment money, and because 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.439 they hadn't found a way to generate enough revenue, they 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:18.760 couldn't stay afloat, and a lot of them went completely 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.960 out of business. Some of them took serious hits to 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.879 their value. Amazon dot Com, for example, was around in 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:28.200 those days and for a while had shares that were 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.560 in the triple digit value, like over a hundred dollars 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.520 a share, but after the bubble burst it dropped to 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:39.400 less than ten dollars a share. Huge drop. But companies 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.560 like Amazon were large enough and and savvy enough to 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.840 wade through that time and emerge out the other side. 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:50.600 Not all companies were so lucky, And the worst part 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:53.160 of this is that those employees who had worked so 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.200 hard and had been rewarded in stock now found themselves 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:01.520 with worthless stock. The companies were bankrupt, so the shares 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.040 were not worth anything, and that was a huge issue. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.919 So you had all these people who, for a while 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:11.240 on paper were millionaires and then suddenly they were broke, 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:15.360 or at least they weren't millionaires anymore. Many dot com 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:19.399 companies went on to business um and those that stayed 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:23.240 around people wanted to try and figure out, well, what 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.880 what set them apart, what made them different? How did 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.920 these companies survive, How did these websites make it through 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:33.119 the dot com bubble burst while so many others went away? 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.479 And that's where the term web two point oh really 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:41.200 comes into play. Now. Personally, I think it's a dumb term. 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.800 It's terrible. It suggests a chronological order, so it would 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.320 suggest that there was first Web one point oh and 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:50.280 then at some point there was a Web two point 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:52.800 oh release. Because it's very similar to the way we 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:57.440 look at software, for example, we're operating systems, but that's 0:19:57.520 --> 0:19:59.960 not what this means. It's not the way it works. 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.840 So I think it's ultimately more confusing than helpful. But 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:07.360 that's what we have, uh. And the truth is that 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:11.240 both websites that were more in the Web one point 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.920 oh frame than the Web two point oh frame and 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.760 Web two point o websites existed at the same time. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.520 In other words, this wasn't chronological. You can't point to 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.480 a date and say after this time all the websites 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:30.359 were Web two point oh. Even back in with Justin's links, 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.000 we start seeing Web two point oh philosophy working its 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.840 way into websites, and that was years before the dot 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:43.480 com bubble burst. So it's problematic using this term. But 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:48.120 at any rate, we need to look at what actually happened, 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.159 like why is this term around in the first place, 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:55.960 And that's because of the O'Reilly Media company. So in 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.639 two thousand four, Tim O'Reilly, who was the founder of 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.560 O'Reilly Media, and Dale Dougherty, who was a VP and 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.480 O'Reilly we're having a brainstorming session. They were trying to 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:09.639 come up with a an event that could really focus 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:14.720 on what makes a web company successful? Why were some 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.199 web companies able to survive while so many others failed. 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:21.720 What were the mistakes that the older websites made or 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.560 the failed websites made, and what were the success stories? 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:27.080 And so they started trying to think, well, how are 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.880 we going to define this, what's the what's the way 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:34.920 we create a catchy term to explain the new philosophy 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.040 of the web, the one that survived. And that's where 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:41.760 they came up with the term web two point oh. 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:44.520 And that was it. It was just to give a 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:46.879 name to a summit, the Web two point o Summit, 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.400 which took place in two thousand four, and they had 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:55.359 several since then. But they just wanted a way to say, 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:58.400 these are the type of websites that did all right 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.040 throughout the dot com by verse. These are the ones 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:04.720 that had the traits that allowed them to survive. Now, 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:07.400 in general, the qualities that define web two point oh 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.240 are that they tend to be dynamic pages rather than 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.480 static ones, meaning that there's a reason for you to 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.679 go back and look at it again. It's not something 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:18.879 that's going to be a page out of the encyclopedia 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:21.800 and it never ever changes. That makes it Web two 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.280 point oh. Another is that there tends to be some 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:28.840 way for users to generate content and submit it to 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:33.160 the website. That may be something along the lines of blogging, 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:37.440 where the users are journaling using the web page as 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.880 a place for their journal to go. Or it might 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:45.240 be social media site where they're just reaching out to 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.760 friends or sharing links or stories or jokes or whatever. 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.320 Or it might be something more akin to Amazon, where 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.960 users are able to review products that they've purchased, and 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:01.680 that adds value to Amazon because us future customers can 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:04.560 look at those reviews and make judgments, and then they 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:08.680 too can contribute to this system, and that makes the 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:13.159 whole experience of using Amazon more pleasant and robust and 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:17.560 useful to both the company and the consumer. These are 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.520 the sort of things that became known as the web 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:25.440